Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Stewed Pears and Rice
Stewed Pears and Rice
Peel and cut four large pears in halves, put them in a lined pan with half a pound of powdered sugar and one pint of claret, and let them boil slowly till tender. Wash four ounces of rice, and boil it in milk, sweetening to taste. Turn the rice on a hot dish, drain the pears, arrange them on it. Reduce the cooking liquor of the pears to half its original quantity, then pour it over the pears, and serve either hot or cold.
A straightforward poached-pear dessert set on sweetened milk rice. Two things decide whether it works: the ripeness of the pears and how far you reduce the wine syrup.
- PearsUse firm, barely ripe Bosc or Anjou, halved and cored. Ripe supermarket pears collapse in ten minutes; firm ones want 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer, turning once so both cut faces take colour from the wine.
- "Lined pan"Most likely tin-lined copper, the standard lined vessel of the period; a non-reactive pan is what matters, since the claret is acidic. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron does the same job; avoid bare aluminium or unseasoned cast iron.
- Powdered sugarIn 1896 this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Half a pound is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of ordinary granulated sugar.
- ClaretPeriod shorthand for red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; a pint is 2 cups. Sweet or heavily oaked wine throws the balance off, since there is already a great deal of sugar.
- The riceFour ounces is a scant 2/3 cup. Short or medium grain, simmered gently in about 2 cups of milk for 25-30 minutes until creamy and thick enough to hold a spoon; sweeten lightly, since the syrup is intense. Stir often, and keep the heat low or the milk scorches.
- Reducing the syrupThis is the hinge. Boil the poaching liquid down by half, until it coats a spoon but still pours; taken too far it turns to a bitter, sticky glaze once cool. Reduce it in a wide pan after the pears come out.
- Yield and servingFour pears halved give eight halves: four servings as a light dessert, two as a generous one. Hot, the rice should be loose; cold, it firms up considerably, so slacken it with a little milk before plating.
Rice boiled in sweetened milk and served under fruit was a fixture of nineteenth-century European dessert cookery, appearing on French menus as riz au lait and in English books simply as milk rice; pears poached in red wine belong to the same family of thrifty, handsome dishes that turned hard cooking pears into something worth a hotel dining room. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is full of these plainly written continental standards alongside the Waldorf's showpieces, a reminder that a maitre d'hotel's book had to cover the everyday as well as the banquet.