Pear Preserve

History

This recipe for pears put up in sugar syrup appears in La Mejor Cocinera, Recetas de Cocina, a comprehensive Spanish home-cookery collection published in Madrid by Editorial (Saturnino) Calleja. The volume carries no named author; the editions firmly catalogued by the Biblioteca Nacional de España date to the early 1920s — an edition recorded around 1921, with a further hardcover printing in 1923. As printed in the book, the recipe is a plain domestic preserving method: equal weights of pears and sugar; the pears peeled, halved lengthwise, and cored; blanched in boiling water for about fifteen minutes and drained; then cooked gently in a cooled sugar syrup — an almíbar — until the preserve reaches setting point. Almíbar, the word the book uses for that syrup, is a Spanish term of Arabic origin, first documented in Spanish in 1501. Beyond this, the historical record does not document a specific origin, inventor, region, or social meaning for this particular pear preserve. It is a standard household technique for storing fruit in sugar, and the cookbook presents it simply as one recipe among many.

Ingredients

• pears
• sugar
• water

Instructions

1. Weigh out equal quantities of pears and sugar.
2. Peel the pears and halve them lengthwise, removing the seeds and core.
3. Blanch them in boiling water for fifteen minutes, then drain thoroughly.
4. Separately, prepare a sugar syrup (almíbar) to the proper consistency.
5. Once the syrup has cooled, add the fruit and cook gently over low heat until the preserve reaches the desired point of setting.