Recipe no. 504 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 229.
Ingredients
- pears
- syrup
- vanilla
- lemon
Preparation
- Tender pearsFor tender pears, cook them after peeling in a syrup prepared as in the previous recipe.
- Firm pearsFor firmer pears, make a syrup slightly less loaded with sugar.
- Hard pearsFor hard pears, which turn red when cooking, cook them generally without sugar at first.
- Sugaring the hard pearsWhen they are softened by cooking, sugar them and let boil another quarter of an hour or 20 minutes.
- TransferPut the pears into an earthenware dish.
- Reduce the syrupIf there is too much syrup, reduce it after removing the fruit and then pour it over.
- FlavourFlavour the compotes with a vanilla pod or a lemon zest.
Reboul's text
If the pears are tender, cook them, after peeling, in a syrup prepared as above. If they are firmer pears, make a syrup slightly less loaded with sugar. As for hard pears, which turn red when cooking, they are generally cooked without sugar; when they are softened by cooking, sugar them and let boil another quarter of an hour or 20 minutes, then transfer them into an earthenware dish.
If too much syrup has been made, it can be reduced after removing the fruit and then poured over it. These compotes are flavoured with a vanilla pod or a lemon zest.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| pero | pears |
| couire | cook |
| sirop | syrup |
| sucre | sugar |
| tian | earthenware dish |
| bouie | boil |
| redurre | reduce |
| vaniho | vanilla |
| citroun | lemon |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 504, page 229. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.