Most of the fruits we eat today are modern varieties, genetically selected for commercial agricultural qualities such as shipability, size, color and easy growing. Usually, anything developed even fifty years ago is relegated to the status of “heirloom,” as fleeting and scarce as a Duncan Phyfe highboy. That’s not the case with pears. In fact, almost every pear variety you’ve ever eaten is a genuine antique, dating back more than a hundred years. Although there has been some fine-tuning, the household names in peardom have been the same since the middle of the nineteenth century.
The father of the modern pear was a Belgian named Nicolas Hardenpont, who began his work around 1730. Before him, nearly all pears had crisp flesh, more like that of Asian pears than the buttery, melting flesh we so appreciate today. The breeding of pears, like that of apples, is accomplished largely by the propagation of sports—chance genetic mutations that are then refined by horticulturists. So enthusiastic were the Belgians about their pear breeding that, according to one fruit historian, they “seemed to have been quite carried off their feet by [it], and during the first half of the nineteenth century, a fad like the ‘tulip craze’ of Holland reigned in the country.”
The Bosc, that long-necked Gwyneth Paltrow of pears, was developed by Hardenpont’s successor, Jean Baptiste Van Mons, in 1807. The commercial workhorse, the Bartlett, came from England, where it was found in a Berkshire church garden in 1770. In London the trees were sold by an orchardist named Williams, who named the variety after himself. (The Bartlett is still called the Williams pear in Europe.) When it came to America, it was renamed by Enoch Bartlett, who began selling it in this country in 1817.
The great American pear, the Seckel, probably originated strictly by chance. It seems that every fall around the beginning of the eighteenth century, a Philadelphia-area hunter named Dutch Jacob used to return from his rounds with the most delicious pears, the source of which he never divulged. He eventually bought the land on which they grew but soon sold it to a man named Seckel, who introduced the pear to the public. The original tree stood until at least 1870. Since it is so different from any native American fruit, it’s thought to be a genetic mutation that sprang from the seed of a Rousselet de Reims pear brought over by German settlers.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the roster of pears was fairly set. An orchardist’s list from 1857 is full of familiar names: Bartlett, Bosc, Anjou, Forelle, Seckel and Nellis. The only one missing is Comice, which had yet to cross the Atlantic. The queen of pears was discovered by a gentleman farmer in France’s Loire Valley, where the inquisitive pear lover can still find a plaque reading: “In this garden was raised in 1849–50 the celebrated pear Doyenne du Comice by the gardener Dhomme and by Millet de la Turtaudiere, President of the Comice Horticole.” In his 1934 book The Anatomy of Dessert, the English writer Edward Bunyard is palpably overcome by the Comice’s grandeur: “In the long history of the pear the year of 1849 stands alone in importance. The historian will be reminded of the annexation of the Punjab, the accession of Francis Joseph, while in that year America hailed her twelfth President in the person of Zachary Taylor. But what are such things to us? . . . Happy those who were present when Doyenne du Comice first gave up its luscious juice to man. Whom could they envy at that moment? Certainly not Zachary Taylor.”
As in France and England, there was an explosion of interest in pears and pear growing among the New England landed gentry from roughly 1820 to 1870. Even though the pear is most unsuited to cultivation on the East Coast—being subject to a devastating blight that thrives in the wet, warm eastern summers—it was widely planted. The results were predictable. “It is folly to suppose that every person who plants an orchard of pear trees succeeds,” wrote a disheartened P. T. Quinn in his Pear Culture for Profit, published in 1869, at the tail end of the craze. “On the contrary, as far as my personal observation has extended, there has been more money lost than made, for I could enumerate five persons who have utterly failed to every one who has made pear culture profitable. . . . It is during the time spent in wading in the dark, without any beacon to guide their steps, that the inexperienced suffer from a series of disappointments.”
On the West Coast, though, pears did very well. They were originally brought to the region by Franciscan missionaries (descendants of these original trees were still growing in the orchard at the San Gabriel Mission at the turn of the twentieth century), but modern West Coast pear growing really began with the pioneers who settled Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 1847 and the California prospectors who came looking for gold in 1849. The pear thrived in the drier summers there, and with the advent of rail shipment of fruit in 1869, its cultivation became an industry. The West Coast has become the natural home of the Comice, by nature an extremely temperamental fruit that is difficult to cultivate on the East Coast or even in Europe.
“Who does not know the melting Comice, now available so large a part of the year, thanks to the Panama Canal and our own Dominions?” Bunyard asks. “Two thousand years of pear history was necessary to educate a public worthy of such refined delight, and the world’s great gourmets had died still unacquainted with the perfect pear.”
Why have pears resisted the willy-nilly vagaries of fashion that have so afflicted other fruits? Its survival is due to a combination of factors. First of all, the pear varieties we have are uncommonly good and cover a wide range of flavors and textures. Also, although pears are every bit as easy to breed as, say, apples, they are harder to grow. Pears are susceptible to a wide variety of diseases, so any new variety that is tried has to be proved fit. Finally, introducing a new variety into the marketplace is extremely expensive, and the pear market, as opposed to its seasonal cohort the apple, is relatively small. In fact, just in the past decade, there were a few attempts to “improve” pear varieties, mainly by breeding for red color—something that is largely missing in pears. But those attempts met with a big “ho hum” from consumers, and that has discouraged others from experimenting.
If you want a hint of what pears looked like before Hardenpont tamed them, consider two of the pear’s close relatives, the Asian pear and the quince. These are very different fruits, but both have a crisp, granular texture that some describe as “sandy.” This texture comes from the distinctive structure of these fruits, whose cell walls are thick and are high in a woody compound called lignin. Pears, if left to ripen fully on the tree, would be hard and woody, too, as their cells develop more lignin as they mature.
As many a home gardener has learned, pears have to ripen after they’ve been picked to be good. On the tree they ripen from the inside out, meaning that by the time the outside is soft enough to eat, the inside is mushy, almost spoiled. For these reasons, pears are always picked hard. They are then “cured” by chilling to around 30 degrees (because of their sugar content, they won’t freeze solid). They are held at this temperature for anywhere from a couple of days (for Bartlett, or summer, pears) to a couple of weeks or more (for Comice, Bosc, Anjou and other pears). After this deep chilling, they are delivered to retail, where they will be ripe and ready to eat in four to ten days, depending on variety and ripening conditions.
A quince is a most unimposing fruit, looking like a blocky, imperfectly carved pear. Most varieties are inedible raw, since they are extremely high not only in lignin but also in tannins, which give the fruit a puckery astringency. What’s more, because the flesh is so high in chemical compounds called phenols, it browns extremely quickly once exposed to air by peeling or cutting. Although a few varieties can be eaten out of hand (mostly those, like the pineapple quince, that originated in warmer climates), the common quince must be thoroughly cooked before it can be eaten. A gentle poaching accomplishes one of the more remarkable transformations in the food world. Cooking not only softens the quince’s rocky flesh, but it also turns it a rosy pink. Once cooked, a quince is not only beautiful but also delicious, with a warm, spicy perfume.
Asian pears fall somewhere between quinces and European pears. Although the texture is crisp, not melting, it falls short of being granular. And the Asian pear can be eaten raw and straight from the tree. The flavor is pure pear—honeyed and slightly spicy. To correct a common misimpression, Asian pears are not the result of a cross between a pear and an apple, even though that is a fair description of the appearance of most varieties. Most Asian pears are shaped like slightly flattened apples, though their skins tend much more to bronze and russet rather than shiny red. One popular variety, the Ya Li, looks quite like a Bartlett.
WHERE THEY’RE GROWN: Pear trees need more cold than most other fruit trees, and they are susceptible to a wide variety of climatic ills. For this reason, between 90 and 95 percent of the total U.S. crop is grown in California, Washington and Oregon. The harvest begins in California’s northern San Joaquin Valley in late July or early August. These are Bartlett, or summer, pears, and although they are the first fruit on the market, they are rarely the best. In mid-August to early September, better Bartletts from the cooler Lake and Mendocino counties begin to arrive. Starting in mid-September, you find other varieties of pears grown in the Pacific Northwest. These stay in the market into the following spring but are best before Christmas.
HOW TO CHOOSE: Unlike, say, peaches, the various varieties of pears are very different from one another. Bartletts, the most common variety, have a buttery texture and a mild, sweet flavor. Anjous are firmer and spicier. Seckels are tiny, with a rich taste. Boscs have russet skin and a graceful, slender neck; their flavor is mildly spicy. The Comice is the wide-bottomed queen of the pear family, with a heavenly floral fragrance, a buttery, slightly granular texture and a flavor that is almost winey in its complexity. A pear is perfectly ripe and ready to eat when it is just beginning to soften on the neck, just below the stem. Except for Bartlett pears, pay no attention to color—it changes only very slightly, if at all, during ripening. A perfectly ripe Comice pear, one of the true glories of the fruit world, will still show plenty of green. Bartletts will go from green to golden. They may look scuffed because of their delicate skin, but pay that no mind.
HOW TO STORE: Don’t worry if the pears you buy in the grocery store aren’t as ripe as you’d like. These are among the best fruits for ripening at home. Just leave them at room temperature until they begin to soften. The process can be speeded up by keeping them in a paper bag to trap the ethylene gas they naturally produce. This also promotes more even ripening. Once they’re at the point you like, store them in the refrigerator, loosely wrapped in a plastic bag.
HOW TO PREPARE: The skin of most pears is delicate, so whether to peel them or not is strictly up to the consumer. Pears do have a tough center core that is long and thin, so that usually needs to be removed. And remember that any cut surfaces of a pear will have to be rubbed with lemon juice right away to prevent enzymatic browning, which begins almost immediately.
ONE SIMPLE DISH: If you have great pears, say perfectly ripe Comices, the best thing you can do is put them on a plate with some cracked freshly harvested walnuts and a great blue cheese. Port, anyone?
WHERE THEY’RE GROWN: Almost all of the Asian pears in the United States come from California, although there are scattered plantings elsewhere around the country. Harvest begins in mid- to late July and continues through September. Some varieties, particularly Okusankichi, Shinseiki, Niitaka, Ya Li, Tsu Li, Dasui Li and Shin Li, do well in cold storage.
HOW TO CHOOSE: Even though Asian pears look (and feel) as hard as rocks, they do bruise easily. To prevent this, they are frequently sold with each fruit wrapped in its own little plastic foam cup or sock. Asian pears are picked fully ripe. Russet varieties should be golden brown. Smooth-skinned fruit should be yellow, not green. The Ya Li and other pear-shaped varieties should be pale green.
HOW TO STORE: Refrigerate.
HOW TO PREPARE: Asian pears rarely need peeling. If you do peel them, rub them with lemon juice or keep them in acidulated water to prevent browning.
ONE SIMPLE DISH: Asian pears are best eaten out of hand to fully appreciate their honeyed flavor.
WHERE THEY’RE GROWN: Less than a thousand tons of quinces are harvested commercially in the United States each year, almost entirely in California.
HOW TO CHOOSE: Fully ripe quinces have a pale golden color and may be covered with a pale gray fuzz.
HOW TO STORE: Store quinces at room temperature. In fact, the more aromatic varieties can be kept in a closet, where they will provide a fragrant perfume until you are ready to cook them.
HOW TO PREPARE: Most quinces must be cooked before they can be eaten. If they are going to be visible in a dish—as opposed to being used in a puree—peel and core them. If you are making a puree or a jam or jelly, leave the peel and core intact, as they are full of pectin, which will help set the mixture. Quinces discolor quickly when peeled or cut, so rub them with lemon juice or store them in acidulated water until ready to use.
ONE SIMPLE DISH: Probably the simplest thing to do with quinces is to poach slices in a simple syrup made of equal parts sugar and water. When they are tender, aromatic and rosy, serve them with plain sugar cookies.