Poires Belle Hélène

Now for the pears. Old-fashioned they certainly are, and my grandmother used to make them for me when I was a child. But they’re not nursery food and it isn’t just nostalgia that makes me dredge them up. Pears are so rarely edible when raw. When they’re good, they’re wonderful, but I am beginning to think Ralph Waldo Emerson was being optimistic when he wrote, ‘There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat’: most pears go from hard to woolly wit