349. What's the point of pears?

I wrote the following article for the quarterly magazine of the Northern Fruit Group.

What’s the point of pears?

 

They all look the same, they all taste the same and they don’t store well.

 

This year, however, I was converted. I also found out that they do have a point – a historical one.

 

My epiphany took place at the end of a cold rainy Dewhurst session – at the close of the Summer. (Dewhurst, for years now, has reliably provided good weather every Wednesday, irrespective of the forecast, the rest of the week, and what it’s doing on my, Hayfield, side of the Pennines.) This year it was different and we suffered on Wednesdays.

            So there I was, sitting in my car, engine on, heater on, mug of marmite in my hands, ready to drive away. My car boot was full of wet and claggy waterproofs and tools.

            Hilary approached, bearing gifts.

            I wound down the window. She handed me three pears. ‘Try those. Don’t keep them too long. Weekend at the latest.’ As she walked away, I was already plotting, currying favour with my wife, Sarah. (While I’d been swanning around at Dewhurst she’d been hard grafting in Manchester with impossible deadlines, interminable meetings, and difficult staff.) I drove home, bearing black kale and perfect blushing raspberries.

            On Friday, I looked at Hilary’s pears. After a while of concentrated thought, I dredged up their name. Louise Bonne de Jersey. I sliced one open for my lunch, like the fool at Henry VIII’s table. If it wasn’t any good, then I’d eat all three myself.

            The flesh was white and creamy. Blemish free. I took a bite as I read a magazine. I stopped reading. The flesh melted in my mouth. It was exquisite. I took another bite. Golden, honeyed flesh. I pushed away the magazine. Finished the pear. Every morsel, only the stalk and the pips remained on the plate. I now had a new dilemma: did I love Sarah enough?

 

Before I answer that, I will make my historical case for pears.

 

In the 1860s, a new style of dining came to prominence in British high society: dining à la Russe, dining in the Russian style. Rather than all food being put on the table at the start of the meal, food was served in different courses (like it is today). The increasing variety and quality of pears helped to define these courses. Fruit regularly formed the centrepiece of the table. In addition (in England) the dessert course was often of fruit alone. (In France sweets were still popular.) Dividing fruit into ‘dessert’ and ‘culinary’ varieties originated from this period.

            There was huge competition amongst landowners to present the most opulent, the most attractive, the most delicious dessert, and huge expense was made to try and achieve this. A large country estate was needed, along with several glasshouses and a small army of gardeners. Strawberries and grapes were grown, along with peaches, passion fruit and pineapples.

The pear was a star performer.

In ‘The Book of Pears’ Joan Morgan highlights Doyenne d’Ete, ‘a tiny honeyed mouthful’, the ‘golden’ Williams Bon Chretien, the ‘syrupy sweet’ Fondant d’Automme, Beurre Suerfin ‘which overflowed with lemony juice’, and the ‘finely textured, vanilla-scented’ Doyenne Du Comice.

 

Buoyed up by these revelations I decided to re-visit the shape of pears. I looked up some notes I took at a pear ID course a couple of years ago. Pears do have different shapes, and although to many this maybe debateable, they do have wonderful names for the shapes. Bergamot, conical, pyriform, calebasse. Wonderful to write, and to say, and to know.

 

So, pears have plenty of point: pleasing names for their different shapes, exquisite taste and historical significance. I, at least, will be grafting more pears in March.

 

And if you’re hanging on, wondering, of course I shared the two remaining Louise Bonne.