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Sliced Pears in Cream
Remove stems and peel six good-sized, sound, sweet pears, cut in halves, remove seeds and cores. Slice them in thin slices, crosswise, place on a compotier, sprinkle over two tablespoons powdered sugar, lightly mix, and serve with thick cream and sugar separately.
A raw fruit dessert that stands or falls on the fruit itself — there is nothing here to hide an underripe pear.
- Ripeness is the whole recipePears must give slightly at the neck and smell sweet; a pear that is firm all over will be gritty and bland sliced raw. Bartlett, Comice and Anjou all work, ripened at room temperature for a few days before use.
- CompotierA footed glass or porcelain dish for fruit. Any shallow serving bowl does the job; keep it wide so the slices lie in a layer or two rather than crushing under their own weight.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period this generally means granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine or caster sugar is the closer match and dissolves into the pear juice without clouding it.
- Thick creamHeavy or whipping cream, unwhipped, or British double cream. In this period "thick cream" often meant the risen top of unhomogenized milk, richer than most supermarket cream; do not substitute half-and-half.
- BrowningSliced pears oxidize within minutes. Slice as close to serving as possible, or toss with a teaspoon of lemon juice, which also sharpens the sweetness.
- "Lightly mix"Fold with a spoon two or three turns only. Sugared pear slices break down quickly and you want distinct slices sitting in their own syrup, not a purée.
- YieldSix pears serve six to eight as written, though the cream and sugar passed separately means portions are up to the table.
Fresh fruit served raw with cream and sugar belongs to a long tradition of the simple dessert course that closed a formal meal — the same logic behind strawberries and cream. The compotier named here is a French service dish, and the cream went round in a separate jug so guests could take as much as they liked. It is also a recipe that only works in a world with good pears in season and cream that had not been standardized to a uniform fat content, which is why instructions this spare could be trusted to produce something worth eating.