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Pear Salad
Peel and core some ripe pears, cut them in thin slices, and lay them in a glass dish, sprinkle powdered sugar over them, pour in a little brandy or rum, and serve.
Four ingredients and no cooking, so everything depends on the fruit and on restraint with the spirit. A few period terms need translating.
- "Powdered sugar" in 1896In American cookbooks of this era powdered sugar usually means finely granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-thickened confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match and dissolves into the pear juices without clouding them.
- Quantities are left to youOscar gives none. For four servings, figure three or four ripe pears, a tablespoon of sugar, and two to three tablespoons of brandy or rum — enough to pool in the bottom of the dish, not to submerge the fruit.
- Choose the pear for textureBartlett, Comice or Anjou at full ripeness, giving slightly at the neck. A hard pear will not release juice and the sugar will stay gritty; an overripe one collapses into pulp when sliced thin.
- Slice thin, and slice lateCut pears brown quickly. Slice directly into the serving dish and sugar them as you go, or toss with a little lemon juice first — the acid also sharpens what is otherwise a very sweet plate.
- Let it stand, brieflyTen to twenty minutes chilled is enough for the sugar to draw out syrup and the spirit to perfume the fruit. Longer and the slices go limp and the brandy dominates.
- The glass dish is not decorationGlass is what the recipe specifies, and with it the layered slices and the syrup become the whole presentation. A shallow glass bowl or individual coupes serve better than anything opaque.
- The alcohol stays rawNothing here cooks off the brandy or rum, so this is not a dish for children or anyone avoiding alcohol. Substituting pear nectar or a little orange juice gives a different but coherent dessert.
Oscar Tschirky's book files this among salads, which reflects nineteenth-century American usage rather than modern categories: a "salad" was often any cold dressed dish, and sweet fruit versions dressed with sugar, cream or spirits appeared alongside lettuce and mayonnaise. Dishes of sliced fruit macerated in liquor were a common light finish in the period, cheap in labor and impressive in a cut-glass dish. By the 1890s fruit reached New York by rail from California and the South, so ripe pears out of local season were a quiet luxury the book takes for granted.