Warden pear pie

England's medieval spiced pear pie: the great Warden pear of Bedfordshire abbey, slow-baked with ginger, cinnamon, mace, and saffron in a deep pastry coffyn: the pie that Shakespeare put on stage in The Winter's Tale

Origin: England

From the journey of Pear.

The Warden pear takes its name from Warden Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in Bedfordshire in 1135, whose monks cultivated a large-fruited, very hard, late-keeping pear variety that became famous throughout medieval England. The Warden pear's firmness made it useless for eating raw but ideal for the long, slow cooking required to tenderise it, baked in pastry with sugar, ginger, cinnamon, mace, and saffron, it produced a deeply spiced, aromatic pie that appears in nearly every major English cookbook of the 14th and 15th centuries: the Forme of Cury (c. 1390), the Boke of Nurture (c. 1450), and others. Shakespeare mentions warden pies directly in The Winter's Tale (Act IV, Scene 3): 'I must have saffron to colour the warden pies': a direct reference to the practice of using saffron to turn the pie filling golden. The warden pie is one of the most clearly documented preparations of the English medieval kitchen and the direct ancestor of the British and American fruit pie tradition.

Ingredients

Filling

900 g firm, hard pears (Conference, Bosc, or quince, the firmer the better)
100 g light brown sugar

Spices

1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tsp ground mace (or nutmeg, mace is more authentic)
0.25 tsp ground cloves
0.25 tsp saffron threads, soaked in 2 tbsp hot water for 10 minutes

Liquid

2 tbsp red wine or sweet wine (verjuice in the original)

Optional

1 tbsp rose water (optional, authentic medieval addition)

Pastry

300 g plain flour
75 g cold butter, cubed
75 g cold lard or additional butter (lard is more historically accurate)
tbsp cold water
0.5 tsp salt

Glaze

1 egg, beaten (for the pastry glaze)

Method

Make the pastry: rub the flour, salt, butter, and lard together with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add cold water a tablespoon at a time, mixing until the dough just comes together. Wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Peel, core, and quarter the pears. Toss with the sugar, ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, wine, saffron water, and rose water if using. Leave to macerate for 15 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan 180°C / 390°F). Divide the pastry into two-thirds (base) and one-third (lid). Roll the larger portion and line a deep 23cm pie dish, leaving an overhang.
Fill the pastry-lined dish with the spiced pears, packing them in tightly. The pears will reduce during cooking.
Roll out the remaining pastry for the lid. Lay over the pears and crimp the edges firmly. Cut a steam vent in the centre. Brush generously with beaten egg.
Bake at 200°C for 20 minutes until the pastry begins to colour. Reduce to 170°C (fan 150°C / 340°F) and continue baking for 45–50 minutes until the pastry is deep golden and the pear juices are bubbling at the vent.
Allow to cool for 20 minutes before cutting. Serve warm with thick cream, clotted cream, or, in the medieval tradition, with a sweet custard sauce flavoured with ginger and honey.

Notes

The Warden pear variety itself is now essentially extinct as a cultivated variety; the last known Warden trees were lost in the 20th century. However, the preparation lives on: any very hard, cooking pear (particularly quince-like varieties with high tannin content and low water content) produces a warden pie of authentic character. The combination of mace, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves that spices the Warden pie is the direct ancestor of the 'pumpkin pie spice' and 'apple pie spice' blends still used in American baking: one of the clearest examples of a medieval English flavour profile surviving, essentially unchanged, into the modern American kitchen through the Puritan settlers who brought their Boke of Nurture recipes to New England in the 1620s.

The Gastrographer

Name: Warden pear pie
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 75 min
Total time: 2 h
Yield: 8
Cuisine: England
Ingredients: 900 g firm, hard pears (Conference, Bosc, or quince, the firmer the better); 100 g light brown sugar; 1 tsp ground ginger; 1 tsp ground cinnamon; 0.5 tsp ground mace (or nutmeg, mace is more authentic); 0.25 tsp ground cloves; 0.25 tsp saffron threads, soaked in 2 tbsp hot water for 10 minutes; 2 tbsp red wine or sweet wine (verjuice in the original); 1 tbsp rose water (optional, authentic medieval addition); 300 g plain flour; 75 g cold butter, cubed; 75 g cold lard or additional butter (lard is more historically accurate); tbsp cold water; 0.5 tsp salt; 1 egg, beaten (for the pastry glaze)

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control