No. 771

Alligator Pears

Avocats

Originally from south America. Select the fruit when very ripe, peel off the outer green skin, and cut the pear in slices, range them on a side dish, season with salt, pepper and vinegar, and garnish around with slices of lemon cut in halves.

← No. 770 Yorkshire Pudding Garnishing Cold Side Dishes No. 772 Anchovies-Sardels—Anchovy Salad and Anchovie →

For the Modern Kitchen

A two-line dressed avocado from a period when the fruit was a novelty on American tables. The only real decisions are ripeness and acid.

"Alligator pear" and "avocat"Both are period names for the avocado; the French avocat reached French through Spanish aguacate, itself from the Nahuatl ahuacatl. Ranhofer's "originally from South America" is loose — the fruit's origin is Mesoamerican, with Mexico and Guatemala the usual centres named.
Which avocadoThe varieties Ranhofer could buy were mostly large, thin-skinned West Indian types, not the pebbly Hass that dominates now (Hass is a twentieth-century variety). Any ripe avocado works, though a Hass is denser and less watery than what the dish assumes.
Very ripe means yielding, not softThe fruit must give to gentle pressure at the stem end but still hold a clean slice. Overripe flesh collapses on the knife and turns grey and stringy on the plate.
Peel and pitThe instruction to "peel off the outer green skin" predates the modern habit of halving and scooping. Halve lengthwise, twist apart, remove the stone, then peel each half — the skin lifts away in sheets from a properly ripe fruit.
Vinegar quantityNone is given. A teaspoon or two of a mild wine vinegar over one sliced fruit is enough; more than that and the acid flattens the flesh. The half-slices of lemon ranged around the dish presumably let guests add their own.
Slice lateCut flesh browns within minutes. Dress and serve immediately, or brush the slices with lemon juice as you go — the acid slows the enzymatic browning that the original recipe simply ignores by assuming the plate goes straight to table.
Yield and place in the mealOne avocado serves two as a cold side dish. The entry sits among Ranhofer's cold side dishes, next to the anchovy entries, rather than standing as a course of its own.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of what a great American restaurant kitchen could produce. The avocado appears here as a curiosity rather than a staple: commercial planting in California and Florida was barely underway, and fruit reaching New York came largely by ship from the Caribbean and Central America, expensive and irregular in supply. That explains the brevity of the entry — Ranhofer is telling a professional cook what to do with an unfamiliar ingredient, not developing a dish. The name "alligator pear", in English use since the eighteenth century, is generally traced to a mangling of Spanish aguacate reinforced by the rough hide of some varieties; it stayed the common American term well into the twentieth century before growers pushed "avocado" as the better sales word. The treatment Ranhofer gives it — sliced, salted, sharpened with vinegar and lemon — is essentially how the fruit is still eaten across much of Latin America.