Ingredient

Pear

A pear left to ripen on the tree goes gritty and brown at the core before the outside is ready. Growers therefore pick them hard, and the ripening is meant to happen in your kitchen. This is genuinely unusual, and nobody in the shop tells you.

Why they are sold hard

Pears ripen from the inside out. Left on the tree, the flesh around the core breaks down into a mealy brown mush while the outer flesh is still firm, and by the time the outside gives, the middle is ruined.

Picked mature but hard and ripened in cool air, the whole fruit softens more evenly. That is why a shop pear is a rock, and why leaving it in the bowl for three or four days is not neglect but the actual instruction.

The window between ripe and over is famously short — a pear is often said to be ready for about an hour. That is an exaggeration, but not by as much as you would like.

Checking ripeness without ruining the fruit

Squeezing the belly bruises it and tells you nothing useful.

1. Press gently at the neck, just beside the stalk. This is the thinnest flesh and it softens first.
2. If it gives slightly under light thumb pressure, it is ready. If it is rock hard there, wait.
3. If the neck is soft and the belly is soft too, it has gone. Cook it.
4. To speed ripening, put pears in a paper bag at room temperature, with a banana or an apple to supply extra ethylene.
5. Once ripe, move them to the fridge, which buys three or four days.

The varieties, and what they are for

Conference

Long, narrow, russeted. The British standard. Firm even when ripe, holds its shape when poached, and slightly gritty. The best all-rounder.

Comice

Round, fat, green-yellow with a blush. The best eating pear — buttery, juicy, perfumed. Falls apart if cooked.

Williams

Also sold as Bartlett. Turns yellow as it ripens, which makes it the easiest to judge. Very juicy, musky, and the classic tinned pear.

Rocha

Portuguese, squat, sweet and firm. Keeps unusually well.

Nashi

Asian pear. Crisp like an apple, extremely juicy, low in acid, and eaten raw rather than cooked.

What to do with hard ones

A hard pear is not a failure. Several of the best pear dishes require one.

• Poach them. Whole and peeled, in wine or a spiced syrup, forty minutes. This only works with firm fruit; a ripe pear disintegrates.
• Roast them alongside pork, or halved with honey and a scrape of nutmeg.
• In a salad with blue cheese, walnuts and chicory, where firmness is what you want.
• Pear and almond tart, using poached halves fanned on frangipane.
• Chutney, with ginger and vinegar, which is a good use for a whole tray.
• Pear and ginger jam, though pears are low in pectin and acid and will need lemon and jam sugar.
• Grated raw into a slaw, where the sweetness works against mustard and vinegar.

Common questions