Pears

PERIOD: France, 14th century | SOURCE: Chiquart's "On Cookery" | CLASS: Authentic

DESCRIPTION: A simple recipe of  baked pears

ORIGINAL RECEIPT:

Again, pears cooked without coals or water: to instruct the person who will be cooking them, he should get a good new earthenware pot, then get the number of pears he will be wanting to cook and put them into that pot; when they are in it, stop it up with clean little sticks of wood in such a way that when the pot is upside down on the hot coals it does not touch them at all; then turn it upside down on the hot coals and keep it covered over with coals and leave it to cook for an hour or more. Then uncover them and check whether they have cooked enough, and leave them there until they are cooked enough. When they are cooked, put them out into fine silver dishes; then they are borne to the sick person.

- Scully, Terence, ed. and trans. Chiquart's "On Cookery" - A Fifteenth-century Savoyard Culinary Treatise. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1986.

MODERN RECIPE:

• pears, cored
• cinnamon & sugar to taste (optional)

This recipe is much less elaborate than it appears in the original, and is simply pears baked in an oven, very much like our contemporary baked apple but without the addition of sugar & spices. Baked pears were thought to have medicinal properties and were one of the foods considered appropriate for the ill, hence the instruction to give them to the sick person. Feasts often ended with baked apples & pears, served with the other spices & confections of the dessert course. Keeping that in mind, the modern recipe has been sweetened with a little cinnamon & sugar.