Some flavours need no reminder. Open a jar and you immediately know where you remember them from. For me, pickled pears are one of those flavours.
My grandmother made the best ones. I remember she always had plenty, preserved in old-fashioned glass jars. They were those distinctive, heavy jars with glass lids, rubber sealing rings around the rims and metal spring clips holding everything firmly in place. These days we tend to use ordinary screw-top jars, but those old preserving jars had a charm all their own.
When I visited Grandma, she would often bring out a jar of pears. There was really no point putting it back in the pantry or fridge afterwards. We ate the whole jar. Just the two of us. The pears were sweet, tangy and gently spiced with cloves, quite unlike fresh pears or pears in fruit compote. To this day, that is the flavour I associate with pickled pears.
So when I make them myself, I do not try to modernise the recipe. I have a simple handwritten recipe: water, vinegar, sugar, cloves and pears. No long list of spices and no culinary tricks. That is exactly how they should be.
Pickled Pears – A Recipe Worth Keeping
Another reason I love old recipes is that they are often surprisingly short. On her little piece of paper, Grandma wrote:
Pickling liquid:
½ litre vinegar (10% acidity)
1 litre water
1 kg sugar
a few cloves
And after that, little more than:
“Bring to the boil. Add the peeled pears to the boiling syrup. Bring back to the boil and cook briefly. Put them into a jar while hot. Cover with boiling syrup.”
That was it. Back then, people were simply expected to know when a pear was ready and what “cook briefly” meant. 😉
That is one reason I want to preserve recipes like this. Not only so I can return to them myself, but also so they do not disappear along with the old scraps of paper, notebooks and jars that once stood in our grandmothers’ pantries.
Which Pears Are Best for Pickling?
Grandma Sabina used Conference pears, choosing firm, sound fruit that did not fall apart when handled.
They could be ripe and sweet, but the flesh had to stay firm. That mattered because she put them into hot pickling liquid and cooked them briefly. A very soft, overripe pear could turn to purée before she had a chance to transfer it to a jar. She left smaller pears in halves and cut larger ones into quarters. She peeled them and carefully removed the cores.
She never used rotten fruit or pears that had started fermenting. If a pear had a small bruise, she cut that part away, but for preserves intended for longer storage she mainly chose sound fruit.
Pickled Pears – Step-by-Step Recipe
Pickled Pears – My Grandmother’s Old Recipe
6-8
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kcalSweet-and-sour pears in a vinegar syrup with cloves, made using an old family recipe. Perfect with meat, pâté and cheese, or simply eaten straight from the jar.
Ingredients for the Pickling Liquid
500 ml spirit vinegar (10% acidity)
1 litre water
1 kg sugar
a few cloves
2.5–3 kg firm, sound pears, or as many as will fit into your prepared jars
Directions
I prepare the pears
I wash and peel the pears thoroughly. Depending on their size, I cut them into halves or quarters and remove the cores.
I try to prepare the fruit just before cooking, because peeled pears quickly turn brown.
I make the pickling liquid
I pour one litre of water and half a litre of spirit vinegar (10% acidity) into a large pot. I add one kilogram of sugar and a few cloves.
I heat the mixture, stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved.
Then I bring the liquid to the boil.
I add the pears to the hot liquid
I add the peeled pears to the boiling liquid in batches.
I bring it back to the boil and cook the fruit briefly. I am not trying to cook it until completely soft. Each pear should soften slightly and start to become translucent, while still holding its shape.
This is one of those moments when I rely more on a fork and my own eyes than on a timer.
I transfer the hot pears to jars
I transfer the hot pieces of pear to clean, scalded jars prepared beforehand.
I pack them fairly closely, without pressing them down and damaging the fruit.
I cover the pears with hot pickling liquid
I fill the jars with the boiling vinegar liquid. The pears should be submerged.
I wipe the jar rims carefully and screw on clean lids firmly.
I heat-process the jars
I heat-process the filled, sealed jars. Afterwards, I leave them to cool and check that all the lids have sealed properly.
I store the finished pears in a cool, dry, dark place.
How Long Should Pears Cook in the Pickling Liquid?
The old recipe gives no exact cooking time. Just this beautifully simple instruction:
“Cook briefly.”
It really is difficult to give one precise number here. Everything depends on the variety, the size of the pieces and how ripe the pears are. Some need a few minutes, while others soften almost as soon as the liquid comes back to the boil. So I check the fruit as it cooks. It should soften slightly and become a little translucent, while still staying firm. I would rather take a pear out a little too early. It will remain in the hot liquid and then undergo heat processing anyway.
Why So Much Sugar?
A kilogram of sugar may seem rather alarming at first, especially if you are making pickled pears for the first time. But you need to look at the proportions of the whole pickling liquid. For every litre of water, there are 500 ml spirit vinegar with 10% acidity. The sugar balances the vinegar’s strong acidity. That is what creates the distinctive flavour of pickled pears: sweet and sour at the same time. And that is a flavour I would not want to change in this recipe.
Cloves Are Enough
Pears go well with cinnamon, vanilla, star anise, cardamom and several other spices. You can make a more warmly spiced pickling liquid, and sometimes I do, adding a vanilla pod or my favourite cinnamon. But this recipe means something different. It is more than a recipe for pickled pears: it brings back moments spent with loved ones I will never see again. It is about the pears I remember and the smile on my grandmother’s face as I ate another helping.
That is why I stick to a few cloves.
You should be able to taste them, but they must not overpower the fruit. These should still be pickled pears, rather than a spiced fruit compote with pears in it.
Pickled Pears and Old Preserving Jars
This recipe brings back another picture: Grandma’s jars. They were not like today’s twist-off jars with their metal screw lids. Grandma had preserving jars with glass lids, rubber sealing rings and metal spring clips. She had so many of them. They stood filled with all sorts of preserves, but I remember the pears particularly well. Whenever I visited, she would open one of those jars and we would sit down to eat together. I do not remember us ever wondering what to do with the leftovers.
There were no leftovers.
Just the two of us could finish an entire jar. Perhaps that is why I find it hard to think of pickled pears only as an accompaniment to roast meat. As far as I am concerned, you can just put a jar on the table, hand out two forks and you are all set.
What to Serve with Pickled Pears
If you can resist eating them straight from the jar, there are plenty of ways to serve them. Sweet-and-sour pears go beautifully with roast pork, duck and game. They are also excellent with homemade pâté, cold meats and cheese.
The tangy pickling liquid cuts through the richness of the meat, while the sweetness of the fruit provides an interesting contrast. Think of them much like pickled plums or cranberries served alongside meat dishes.
Preserves That Mark the Seasons
Making homemade preserves has another benefit for me: the kitchen starts to follow the seasons. Spring brings the first things we can gather and put into jars. That is when I make dandelion syrup, also known as dandelion honey, among other things.
Then comes the fruit. When the plums ripen, I make oven-baked plum butter. It is convenient because, instead of standing over a saucepan for hours, I let the oven do much of the work.
And when pear season arrives, I return to pickled pears. Each preserve is different, but they have one thing in common: I make them when their main ingredient is in season.
Do Pickled Pears Need Heat Processing?
I do heat-process mine. I line the bottom of a large pot with a cloth, arrange the jars so they do not knock against one another during boiling, and add water to about three-quarters of their height.
The processing time needs to be adjusted primarily to the size of the jars. For homemade preserves intended for longer storage, I prefer not to skip this step.
After processing, I leave the jars to cool and then check the seals. If a lid has not sealed properly, that jar goes into the fridge and I eat it first. With pickled pears, that is hardly much of a punishment.
When Can You Open the First Jar?
Preferably not the very next day. The pears need time to absorb the flavours of the pickling liquid. With each passing day, the vinegar, sugar, fruit and cloves begin to meld together. I would leave them undisturbed for at least 2–3 weeks. Then you can open the first jar and see how they taste. There is one small problem, though. Judging by my experiences with Grandma, opening a jar of pickled pears may be an irreversible process. 🍐
An Old Recipe That Stays with Me
These days we save recipes on websites, take photos with our phones and record precise weights, temperatures and preparation times. This recipe survived on a simple handwritten piece of paper.
And I really love that.
When I make pears using it, I am doing more than preparing a few jars for winter. I remember Grandma, her pantry, those old jars with their spring clips and rubber rings, and the jar of pears she would open when I visited.
One jar. Two people. And never anything left over.
Recipes like this are definitely worth keeping. Thank you, Grandma.