the.com/pear
a fruit that ripens from the inside out, betraying you the second you look away
means A sweet, juicy fruit with a rounded body that narrows toward the stem, typically green or yellow when ripe, growing on trees of the genus Pyrus.
from From Old English 'peru', borrowed from a Vulgar Latin form 'pira' (taken as a singular from Latin 'pirum', a pear). The same Latin root spread across Europe, leaving cousins like French 'poire' and Italian 'pera'. The deeper source of 'pirum' is uncertain — it may be a loanword from some pre-Latin Mediterranean tongue, since the word doesn't trace cleanly back to a wider Indo-European root.
- ripens off-tree
- picked unripe, softens in your kitchen instead
- ancient lineage
- cultivated for over 3,000 years
- stone cells
- gritty texture comes from tiny lignin clusters
- rose relative
- belongs to the same family as apples
- sinks intact
- dense flesh makes ripe pears sink in water
bartlett pear — most widely cultivated dessert pear in north america, accounts for ~75% of us commercial production
conference pear — leading pear variety in europe, developed in 1894 england and named after a conference in london
bosc pear — dark brown russet pear from belgium, prized for cooking and storage, popular in european markets since 1807