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Pear Cakes
Heap chipped pears cooked in spice syrup on rounds of toasted sponge cake; cover with a méringue, place half a cooked pear and an almond on top of each; brown delicately in the oven.
A composed dessert rather than a cake, and the original assumes you already know how to poach pears and whip a meringue. The proportions are left entirely to the cook, so here is what the assembly actually needs.
- "Chipped" pearsIn this period chipped generally means cut in thin slices or small flakes rather than diced. Firm pears — Bosc or Anjou — hold their shape better; very ripe Bartletts are apt to cook down to a pulp.
- Spice syrupRoughly 1 cup sugar to 2 cups water with a cinnamon stick, a few cloves and a strip of lemon peel. Simmer the pears until just translucent, 10-20 minutes depending on ripeness, and let them cool in the syrup so they take up the flavour.
- Sponge cake roundsCut rounds about 3 inches across and half an inch thick from a day-old sponge or génoise; fresh sponge tears. Toasting is not decoration — it firms the crumb so the syrup does not turn it to pulp.
- Meringue quantityNo amounts are given. Two egg whites with 4 tablespoons sugar, beaten to stiff peaks, will cover roughly four to six cakes. Add the sugar gradually or the meringue weeps into the fruit.
- "Brown delicately"The recipe gives no oven setting. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F for 10-12 minutes, should set the meringue evenly with pale gold tips. A hotter oven colours it in three or four minutes but can leave the inside slack and dry out the cake beneath.
- The almondUse a blanched whole sweet almond, and put it on before baking so it toasts with the meringue. Bitter almonds, still sold in this era, are not a substitute.
- Draining matters mostLift the pears out of the syrup and let them drain thoroughly before they go on the cake. Syrup carried into the assembly is what makes the meringue slide off in the oven.
- Yield and servingAbout six individual cakes, depending on the size of the sponge layer and how economically the rounds are cut. Serve warm the day they are made; the meringue softens and the cake sogs overnight.
Pears poached in spiced syrup are often said to have been a standard autumn preserve in American households, and recipes like this one may well have existed to use them up handsomely — the fruit, the syrup and a stale sponge layer become a dish fit for company. The construction is essentially a miniature of the meringue-topped puddings that dominated Victorian and Edwardian dessert courses, where a base of cake or crumb, a layer of cooked fruit and a cap of whipped white was infinitely variable. The Butterick Publishing Company was a pattern and magazine house.