Chardewarden

The three-day Labor Day holiday is coming to a close. To finish it, I decided to try out a medieval recipe for a pear pudding. The pears came from my neighbors' tree in their front yard. It produces a lot of pears at this time of the year, but most of them fall to the ground and rot. With their say-so, I managed to find six pears to take home. I peeled them, put them in a glass bowl and kept them in the fridge overnight. The next day, the pears formed a leathery skin, so I knew I had to use them at once.

The pear pudding, or chardewarden, comes from a recipe I found here. It calls for the four pears (peeled, cored, and chopped up), a cup of white wine, four egg yolks, a half-cup of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a half-teaspoon of ginger. The eggs, sugar and cinnamon I had on hand. I had no trouble finding cinnamon. I had to wait a long while to get white wine, because where I live no store sells hooch on Sunday.

I put pears and wine in a saucepan, brought them to a boil, and cooked them until the pears were soft. After cooling, I worked the pears with a potato masher. Then I poured in the egg yolks, sugar and spices, and boiled the lot until it was the consistency of oatmeal. After that I put the result into some dessert bowls to put in the fridge.

The recipe said to serve the chardewarden with snowe, which is whipped cream flavored with rose water. I decided to settle for Cool Whip.

The chardewarden I tried tasted good, although the texture felt grainy on my tongue, as I did not .