Pear Perserves
 

I have been given a bucket of pears & would love to make perserves like my grandmother used to make. It seemed like she would use equal parts pears & sugar. I have googled this but everything wants to add other ingredients. Don't want to use sure=jell. Can anyone help?

My mother always added whole cloves to hers. I don't have her recipe, but feel like it was sugar, cloves and sliced pears. That's how I remember it. I was given several of the canning pears this year and really enjoyed just eating them.

Edited to add: I went and started looking for recipes and realized I had made the assumption that you were using the canning pears as opposed to the softer pears that everyone eats as a standalone salad. The ones we had were the very firm, grainy ones. They were not the soft. We used them as preserves on our biscuits and pancakes. Brings back a lot of good memories. To this day, the canning pears are my favorite.

I'm guessing you are wanting to make jam. I found this site where they only use 3 ingredients & no sure jell:

https://usapears.org/recipe/perfect-pear-jam/

Oh yes, my Mom too! .... and ours had some lemon slices added in too.
After that I have no clue of the recipe.
I was never and still am not a pear lover, but the canned ones, yes!!! :D

Yes, these are the hard pears, not the kind you get in the grocery store for eating. We had biscuits every morning for breakfast cooked in the wood stove. The perserve stand was always on the table. Wonderful memories.

I found a recipe that I think is the one my mother used. We had 2 pear trees. She always called them "Cooking Pears". In the recipe always use 2 cups of pears to 1 cup sugar. She layered pears then sprinkled sugar over them in a big pot, kind of like a dutch oven. Then another layer of pears and sugar and another until the pan was not quite full. (Seems like she would layer the pears and let them stay in the frig overnight.) Pour water in the pan that covers the pears and cook on high until a full boil is reached. Then lower fire to a slow boil. Cook until the juice seems right - kind of a reddish brown. Then can in jars while still hot and seal.

There are lots of recipes on the Internet. Why not try a small batch of one that matches what you used to taste and let us know if you got the right recipe? I'd love to know what you came out with as the final best product. Next year I am going to try to get more than 4 of the canning pears and make a small batch of preserves myself.

The basic recipe that I used was equal pears (with juice) to equal sugar +1 extra cup of sugar. The natural pectin in the fruit should make it gel using the extra sugar. Bring to boil all ingredients for 1 full minute. Place in jars. (pint or 1/2 pint) then put in canner for 15 minutes to process. It should set in 24 hours. If it doesn't set in that time frame you can re-cook and then reprocess. Works for apple jelly, and grape jelly too.

Remembering my mom's delicious pear preserves. She added sugar to the prepared pears and let it set until the sugar dissolved and they get juicy. Then she cooked them to the beautiful dark color that I remember so well. They were always so yummy. Sorry I do not have any measurements to give you. I have done it and just guessed how much sugar to use and how long to cook. Thanks for the memories, farm girl.