Historic Fruit Recipe: Spiced Pear Pie

This pear pie recipe stems back to England in during the Tudor era. It was published in Thomas Dawson's book, A Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594).

It takes a bit of effort to translate these 500 year old recipes into modern English! Here is the original pear pie recipe as published in 1594.

To bake Peares, quinces, and wardens. You must take and pare them, and then coare them: then make your paste with faire water and Butter, and the yolke of an Egge, and sette your Orenges into the paste, and then bake it well: Then fill your paste almost ful with Sinamon, Ginger and Sugar: also apples must be taken after the same sort, saving that whereas the core should be cut out they must be filled with butter everie one: the hardest apples are best, and likewise are Peares and wardens, and none of them all but the Wardens may be perboiled, and the oven must be of a temperate heat, two houres to stand is enough.

A Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594)

The spiced pear pie recipe below is a version of the Tudor dish adapted by culinary historian Brigitte Watson of Tudorexperience.com. She teaches Tudor cookery, creates authentic Tudor banquets and offer tours of her historic property in Norfolk, England.

Brigitte has created the recipe without the use of wardens, which are heirloom pears that were popular in Tudor times. Wardens are hard and stored very well over the winter. But they had to be cooked to be palatable. Today wardens are hard to find unless you grow them yourself, so in this spiced pear pie they are replaced by conventional pears!

So here is Brigitte's delicious modern take on Tudor spiced pear pie featuring warm spices and candied orange peels. This would be a perfect desert for a festive or holiday meal.

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Tudor Spiced Pear Pie

This dish was featured in a cooking book in the 1500s and it still tastes good today. It's perfect for a Tudor style feast!

Course Dessert

Ingredients

• short pastry
• 1 handful candied orange peels chopped, available from supermarket baking section.
• 3-4 pears medium sized and ideally a cooking variety
• cinnamon, ground ginger and sugar to taste
• 1 tsp butter unsalted
• 1 tsp flour for dusting your baking dish

Instructions

• Grease and dust baking dish with flour.
• Roll out and line baking dish with pastry, leaving enough for a lid.
• Fill candied orange peel into dish with pastry and bake in the oven at medium heat – around 180°C for about 15-20 mins. It is more important to allow the pastry to bake long enough without it ending up burned at the top and still unbaked at the bottom. Even heat is best.
• Remove from oven and add chopped pear, sugar and spices. Add a little butter on top and make a pastry lid. Close up with lid and bake again at medium heat for another 25 mins or until golden brown.
• When ready, remove from oven and serve still hot!