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Candied Pears
Peel and core some pears and let them simmer in syrup, with a little lemon juice in it, for ten minutes; turn the pears out, pour the syrup over them, cover the basin and leave them till next day. Strain the syrup off the pears, boil it and pour over them again. Repeat this operation the two following days, giving in all four boilings. Drain the pears on a cane sieve, then, when quite free from moisture, put them a little apart from each other on wire trays, rest them on dishes and put them in a screen at a slow heat to dry them. Take the pears off the trays when cold and dry and pack them in boxes lined with white paper
A four-day candying schedule written for a professional pastry section, where a drying screen and spare space were assumed. It works at home with a low oven and patience.
- The hinge: gradual sugarThe point of four separate boilings is to raise the sugar concentration of the syrup slowly, so the pears take up sugar without collapsing or shrivelling. Rushing the fruit straight into heavy syrup draws water out too fast and gives you tough, wrinkled pears.
- The syrup is unspecifiedOscar gives no density, apparently assuming the kitchen's stock syrup. A light syrup of roughly equal weights of sugar and water is a usual starting point; here the syrup is strengthened only by being boiled down between soakings, since the recipe never calls for more sugar to be added.
- "A basin"A deep bowl or crock, not a bath fixture. It simply holds the fruit and syrup overnight, covered, at room temperature.
- Cane sieveA woven-cane draining rack. A wire cooling rack over a sheet pan does the same job.
- "A screen at a slow heat"A warming closet or drying cabinet. The book gives no temperature; modern drying practice would put it very low, on the order of 120-150F. The lowest setting on a domestic oven with the door propped, or a dehydrator, is the nearest equivalent; the fruit should dry, not bake, which takes several hours to overnight.
- Pear choiceUse firm, slightly underripe fruit -- Bosc or a hard cooking pear. Ripe Bartletts turn to pulp somewhere around the second boiling.
- Lemon juiceIt is there for acidity, which discourages the syrup from crystallising and keeps the fruit from going flat and cloying. A tablespoon or two per quart of syrup is enough.
- StorageProperly dried candied pears keep for months in a cool, dry place, layered with parchment rather than the period's white paper. Any tackiness means moisture remains; return them to the low heat.
Candied fruit belongs to the confectioner's side of a grand hotel kitchen rather than the cook's, and its inclusion here reflects the range of the Waldorf under Oscar Tschirky, whose 1896 book gathered everything the house produced, from consommes to petits fours. The technique itself is much older than the hotel: slow, repeated steeping in progressively heavier syrup is the standard European method for preserving fruit whole, described in confectionery manuals well before the nineteenth century and used for the candied peel, cherries and angelica that decorated cakes and dessert services. Before mechanical refrigeration was general, sugar-saturated fruit was one of several ways to have pears on the table out of season, alongside cool storage and drying, and candied fruit was a staple of the dessert course.