Harvesting and storing pears for slow ripening

Why orchard pears refuse to behave like apples

Apples are forgiving. Leave them on the tree a fortnight too long and you will still get something worth eating. Pears are a different creature altogether. They ripen from the inside out, so by the time the flesh around the core has turned to nectar, the outside is usually collapsing too, and the whole fruit goes grainy and brown within a day or two. Leave a pear to soften on the branch and you have effectively lost it.

The old growers' rule is simple enough: pick pears before they soften, then ripen them in your own time. A pear gathered at the right moment, firm as a cricket ball, will sit happily in a cool shed for weeks and then come good precisely when you want it — usually in the depths of January, when a poached pear with a spoonful of cream is worth more than anything you could buy.

Reading the signs of ripeness

You are looking for maturity, not ripeness. The two are not the same thing, and confusing them is the most common mistake in a domestic orchard.

• The tilt test. Cup the pear in your palm and tilt it gently to horizontal. If the stalk parts cleanly from the spur with almost no pull, it is ready. If you have to tug, wait a few days and try again.
• Ground colour. Ignore the blush on the sunny side. Look at the shaded background colour, which shifts from a hard grass-green to a paler, yellowish green.
• Lenticels. The tiny speckles across the skin darken and become more pronounced as the fruit matures.
• Feel at the neck. A ripe pear gives slightly where the stalk meets the fruit. A mature-but-unripe pear is hard all over, including there.
• Windfalls. The first few sound pears dropping in a still, dry spell are a fair signal that the tree is ready.

Varieties matter enormously here. Early sorts such as Williams' Bon Chrétien and Beth come in from late August and will barely store at all — eat them within a fortnight. Doyenné du Comice follows in early October and keeps reasonably well. Conference, the backbone of most English orchards, is the great keeper, picked through late September and October. Glou Morceau and Beurré Hardy will carry you into the new year if stored properly.

Handling the fruit as though it were eggs

Every bruise you inflict at picking becomes a rotten pocket by December. Pears bruise invisibly, so treat the whole operation as a delicate one.

Pick into a padded basket or a soft bag rather than a bucket, and never let fruit drop into the bottom of it. Use the flat of your fingers against the stalk, or secateurs if the spur is stubborn — never yank, because you will tear away next year's fruiting wood along with it. Keep your thumbnail out of the flesh, and do not stack more than two layers deep in the picking container.

Bring the crop in dry. If rain is forecast, pick a day early rather than a day late. Leave the fruit somewhere airy for a few hours to shed field heat, and set aside any with broken skin for immediate use — those will not keep, so stew them now and freeze the pulp.

Wrapping and boxing for the winter

This is the part that genuinely earns its keep. Pears touching one another pass rot along like gossip, so each fruit gets its own wrapper and its own little pocket of air.

Newspaper is traditional and entirely adequate, though plain tissue paper or the paper wraps saved from a fruit merchant look smarter in a gift box. The technique matters more than the paper:

• Lay a pear in the centre of a square, fold the corners over, and twist gently at the stalk end. Do not seal it tight — the fruit needs to breathe.
• Place wrapped pears in single layers in wooden trays, shallow cardboard boxes or slatted drawers, stem end uppermost, so the fruit rests on its base.
• If you must double up, use a layer of newspaper or straw between the tiers, and never let a pear sit directly on another.
• Label every box with the variety and the picking date. You will not remember by February.

The right store

A cool, dark, slightly humid place is what you are after — an unheated north-facing room, a stone outbuilding, a garage that never quite freezes, or a spare fridge if you have the space. Aim for somewhere between 2°C and 5°C, with humidity high enough that the fruit does not shrivel. Standing the boxes on a damp concrete floor helps; a shallow tray of water nearby helps more.

Keep the store well ventilated and, crucially, keep it away from onions, potatoes and anything else giving off strong fumes, which pears absorb with enthusiasm. Check the boxes every week or so, turning each fruit in your hand and removing any that have gone soft or show a brown patch. One rotten pear will take its neighbours with it within days.

Ripening to order

When you want fruit, bring it into the warmth of the kitchen and leave it in a fruit bowl for three to seven days. Comice and Conference both benefit from a spell of cold before they will ripen evenly, which is precisely what a winter store provides. A ripe pear yields to a gentle thumb at the neck and smells sweet at the stalk. If you are impatient, sit it beside a banana in a paper bag — the ethylene will hurry things along considerably.

Then use it properly. Halve and poach in red wine with star anise, cinnamon and a strip of orange peel; bake with almonds and a little frangipane; or stew roughly and fold through porridge on a frosty morning. Pears that have ripened slowly, in their own time, hold their shape and their perfume in a way that supermarket fruit simply cannot. That, more than anything, is the reward for a morning's careful picking.