No. 3086

Lombarde Pears—Stuffed

Poires Farcies a la Lombarde

Peel one dozen medium-sized pears, leave on a part of the stalk and cut them across in two at two-thirds of their height; scoop them out with a vegetable spoon (Fig. 91) and cook in a light syrup. As soon as they are done drain, wipe and stuff them with a salpicon of fruits mingled with pear marmalade and flavored with kirsch, and put them together again into their original shape. Dress a layer of rice and cream with vanilla (No. 160), finished with a few egg-yolks, on the bottom of a dish; arrange the pears in a circle on the edges of this and fill the center with some stewed apples cut into balls with a vegetable spoon, some candied cherries washed in hot water and pineapple cut in dice, the whole to be diluted with a little vanilla syrup. Serve separately a sauce made of strawberry pulp diluted with as much syrup and flavored with maraschino.

← No. 3085 Pears Ferriere Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3087 Pie, Apple, Peach or Rhubarb →

For the Modern Kitchen

A composed hot fruit entremets from Ranhofer's kitchen: poached pear shells refilled with diced fruit, set on a bed of vanilla rice, with a strawberry-maraschino sauce alongside. Nothing is difficult, but the sequence rewards planning, and several of the terms need translating.

The hinge: choose firm pears and poach gentlyThe pears must hold their shape after being hollowed and reassembled, so use firm, barely-ripe Bosc or Anjou, and keep the syrup at a bare simmer rather than a boil. Ripe pears collapse the moment the coring spoon goes in.
"Vegetable spoon"Fig. 91 in the original shows a scoop of the kind a modern cook calls a melon baller or parisienne scoop. It is used both to hollow the pears and to cut the apple balls for the center.
"Salpicon of fruits"A salpicon is simply a fine, even dice — here of poached or candied fruit, bound with pear marmalade (thick, reduced pear purée) and kirsch. Use the flesh scooped from the pears themselves rather than discarding it.
No. 160, rice and cream with vanillaThat cross-reference is a vanilla rice preparation: rice cooked slowly in sweetened milk or cream until very soft, then enriched off the heat with egg yolks, as the recipe here directs. Add the yolks below a simmer or the base will scramble; it should be thick enough to hold the pears upright.
Candied cherries and pineappleWashing candied cherries in hot water removes the heavy sugar glaze and the slick of syrup, which otherwise thins the center filling. Fresh pineapple works in place of candied, though it is looser and less sweet.
The sauceUncooked strawberry pulp — crushed or sieved berries — diluted with an equal volume of syrup and flavored with maraschino. Make it the day it is served; it separates and dulls on standing.
Yield and serviceTwelve stuffed pears would serve about twelve. The dish belongs to the hot entremets, and the recipe directs that the sauce be served separately.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of a grand French-American restaurant kitchen, and this dish sits in its large "hot entremets" chapter, where fruit was constructed rather than merely cooked. "À la lombarde" points to Lombardy, and in the French repertory such names are often — though not consistently — attached to preparations involving rice, northern Italy being a rice-growing region; the vanilla rice base here may well be what earns the name. Kirsch and maraschino, both derived from cherries, appear frequently as flavorings for fruit desserts in restaurant work of the period. The recipe's structure — a starch base, a ring of shaped fruit, a filled center, a separate sauce — suits service à la russe, where an elaborate dish came to the table as a course of its own and was portioned for the guests.