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Stewed Pears and California Raisins
Pull off stems and peel six medium, sound sweet pears, cut in quarters, core, then place in a small enamelled pan with a piece cinnamon stick, six drops vanilla essence, an ounce granulated sugar, pour in water to just cover pears and let slowly boil for twenty-five minutes. Add two ounces seeded California raisins, shuffle pan and cook for ten minutes longer, remove cinnamon, pour fruit in a compotier, and serve either hot or cold.
A plain compote that depends almost entirely on the pears you start with. Two details in the original carry the whole dish: the pan must be non-reactive, and the fruit is moved by shaking rather than stirring.
- Shuffle, don't stir"Shuffle pan" means slide the pan back and forth over the burner so the quarters shift in the syrup. A spoon will break down the outer flesh of the pears and cloud the liquid.
- Weights to volumesAn ounce of granulated sugar is about 2 tablespoons; two ounces of seeded raisins is roughly a third of a cup. Six drops of vanilla essence is only a fraction of a teaspoon, well under a quarter.
- The pan"A small enamelled pan" is specified because bare cast iron and unlined copper discolour pale fruit and pick up a metallic taste. Any enamelled, stainless or ceramic-lined saucepan works; keep it small so the water just covers the fruit.
- Choose firm pearsTwenty-five minutes at a slow boil, plus ten more, will reduce a ripe Bartlett to sauce. Use Bosc or slightly underripe Anjou, and start checking at fifteen minutes -- the quarters should yield to a knife tip but hold their shape.
- Raisins go in lateThey are added at the end for a reason: given the full cooking time they collapse and give up their colour to the syrup. Ten minutes is enough to plump them.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" here means the seeds have been removed, not that they are present. Modern seedless raisins, Thompson or Muscat, are the direct substitute; Muscat is closer to what was sold as a California raisin in 1906.
- CompotierA footed glass or china dish for stewed fruit. Any shallow serving bowl does; if serving cold, chill the pears in their syrup so they keep absorbing it.
- YieldSix pears serve four to six as a dessert. If the syrup is thin for your taste, lift out the fruit and boil the liquid down for a few minutes before pouring it back.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), and the title tells you as much about American agriculture as about cookery. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, was writing at a moment when California raisins were becoming familiar to American cooks: vineyards in the San Joaquin Valley, planted heavily with Muscat grapes from the 1870s onward, were producing far more dried fruit than local markets could absorb. Specifying "California raisins" rather than simply raisins may suggest some distance from the older trade in Malaga and Smyrna fruit that had supplied American kitchens for decades, though a single recipe title can bear only so much weight. The dish itself is much older than its label -- pears stewed in a light sugar syrup with cinnamon are standard European compote, the sort of thing served in a footed compotier at the close of a meal -- and the raisins do the work that a richer syrup or a spoonful of wine might have done in an earlier version.