By Joel Denker
“There is only ten minutes in the life of the pear, when it is perfect to eat.” Nineteenth century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson captured the ephemeral quality of the pear, which endeared it to elites through the ages. In contrast to its cousin, the commonplace apple (also a member of the rose family), the pear became the special favorite of the upper orders.
Probably native to Central Asia, the pear migrated to the Mediterranean, arriving in Greece in 1000 B.C. The wild pear—small, gritty, and sour—was slowly domesticated. One of the “gifts of the gods,” as the poet Homer called it, the pear tree rose in a garden he depicted in the Odyssey: “[T]here grow tall trees blossoming, pear trees and pomegranates, and apple trees with bright fruit, and sweet figs, and olives in their bloom. The fruit of these trees never perisheth, neither faileth winter or summer, enduring through all the year. Evermore the West Wind blowing brings some fruits to birth and ripens others. Pear upon pear waxes old.”
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To learn more about pears, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
