Young Housekeeper by WM. A. Alcott

Author:WM. A. Alcott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrew McMeel Publishing

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PEAR.

Quality of pears. Bad ones. Baking and roasting pears Cautions in preserving them. Forcing maturity. Mealy pears. Cultivation of the pear. Stewing. Drying. Pear jam.

IN general, what has been said of apples, will apply to pears. Next to apples, they are one of the best table fruits of our country. They are best uncooked. Those are usually preferable which have the thinnest skins; and those are most wholesome, though they may not be to all at first the most agreeable, which are most mealy. Their excellence, moreover, seems to be, in some good degree at least, in proportion to their sweetness.

There are in fashion among us, certain larger, coarse grained winter pears, which I wish were wholly set aside as injurious. For to say nothing of the great waste of soil in occupying it with the trees that bear them, it seems to me worse than a waste—a perversion—of the powers and energies of the human stomach, to fill it with such miserable trash. I know these pears are seldom eaten, how long so ever they may be preserved, in an uncooked state. But, as a general rule which is at least applicable to the fruits, I do not believe substances wholly unfit for the human stomach when uncooked, can be made fit for its use by cookery. The legitimate province of cookery, rationally pursued, is, as I shall insist more strongly hereafter, to improve substances already wholesome, or to increase the quantity of their nutriment. Thus wheat and corn, for example, even uncooked, are quite nutritious; but cookery, besides securing a better mastication, appears to me to improve them; and this is undoubtedly the fact in regard to many of the esculent roots, especially the potatoe.

The time may possibly come, when a cheap method will be discovered of preserving, not only apples and pears, but many other fruits, free from decay, for almost any period desirable. But such a time has not yet arrived; and though apples may be preserved, with pains enough, for a long time without much injury, it is seldom so with pears. And, on the whole, I would not attempt it. Let us make the most of them in their season; and let them be preserved as long as they can well be without special effort; but let us do no more. At least let us not think of preserving those coarse, hard, tough, stringy, unpalatable things which are sometimes deemed so valuable, simply that we may waste our precious hours during the winter, in converting them, by the cooking process, and the addition of sugar, molasses, and other things, into a substance, which, after all, is neither so wholesome, nor to an unperverted appetite so palatable, as a good raw apple. We are responsible to God and posterity for the use of our minutes as well as our months; for our cents as well as our dollars; and have no more right to be selfish or wasteful of minutes and cents than of months and dollars.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.