On a sideboard there stands two very strange bottles squat but shapely. What makes them out of the ordinary is that each contains a full grown pear, as well as its complement of liqueur. One comes from Switzerland, is labelled Williamine i.e. from a Williams pear. The other seems to be from Romania and is Pear Brandy, a little wicker basket around the bottom.
You all probably know how it is done. Once the little pear has set after the blossom, you carefully put your bottle over it and close the neck so that insects cannot get in. This could be done with, say, Scotch tape, or cotton wool or some similar substance. Now how do you prevent the bottle from weighing down the branch and maybe breaking it? Jane Grigson in her Fruit Book suggests forked sticks under the branches. Best of all, of course would be to use pears espaliered against a wall - less strain on the tree. But imagine the manufacturer's problems hundreds, maybe thousands of bottles propped and positioned against trees. They deserve a good profit.
So the pear keeps on growing in the bottle; and both of these are hefty fruit. The contents would be fifty per cent fruit and fifty per cent liqueur. Ours not to reasons why, to a worrying extent, anyway. It's an intensive labour. For, again according to Grigson, when the fruit is full grown you cut it from the tree, pour in your liqueur vodka for preference and, for a month, leave it as much as possible in the sun, well corked. They you open it, add sugar - this is the difficult part, for she assumes you are using a bottle that would hold a litre of spirit. In which case she recommends 300 grammes of caster. Close again for three months until the sugar dissolves. Then, the rather disappointing thing - you have to add a liqueur glass of eau de vie de poire, which doesn't always come in small or cheap bottles. Still.
The two bottles mentioned are, in the case of the brandy untouched, but the other is at the stage when there is more pear than liquid. The fruit doesn't appear to be disintegrating. But, when the liquid is gone, what a job to get the pear out. It will, anyway make a nice decanter, with its modern glass stopper and elegant shape. By the way, Grigson (her book is in Penguin Cookery Library) challenges you to try the same with young grapes, if you have a vine.