Dessert pears

About the plant

The pears of the Middle Ages were hard, gritty things for baking or for perry; the pear that melts in the mouth was invented in Belgium and France between about 1780 and 1850, when a handful of breeders, a priest at Mons, a pharmacist at Boulogne, the gardeners of Angers, raised thousands of seedlings and kept the few whose flesh was fine and buttery. The plate shows three of the results. Beurré Hardy, from Boulogne about 1820, with its russeted skin and melting flesh; Pitmaston Duchess, the giant of the group, raised near Worcester in 1841 by John Williams, who also gave England the Pitmaston Pineapple apple; and Doyenné du Comice, raised at Angers in 1849, which is still the best pear in the world when it is picked and ripened properly.

That is the art of pears. They do not ripen on the tree: they are picked hard, laid in a cool room on slatted shelves and watched, and the day they are ready is the day the flesh at the neck gives under the thumb; a day later they are over. Alice Ellis and Edith Bull painted these three from fruit brought in by the Woolhope Club's members, at natural size with the leaves, and Severeyns of Brussels printed the plate in colour.