I’VE LIVED IN A NUMBER of old Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouses, and each invariably had a Seckel pear growing somewhere near the front of the house. These are small pears, with greenish to yellowish-brown skin, sometimes with a reddish blush, and a spicy, sweet, intensely flavored flesh that remains firm even when ripe. This makes them quite unlike other European pears. I found out later that a man named Dutch Jacob came across this pear as a volunteer seedling (not planted by a person but growing naturally) in a parcel of northern Delaware woodland he bought in 1765. Like apples, pears don’t come true to variety from seed, meaning that if you plant one variety, the mature tree won’t necessarily produce fruit of the same variety, so it could have been a lucky sport of an existing pear, grown from a seed dropped by a bird. Or maybe, contrary to accepted wisdom, North America did have at least one native pear before the arrival of the Europeans.

My dad clued me in to Comice pears. These plump, squat, lop-sided, large pears are less musky and more delightfully aromatic, sweet, and juicy than Bartletts, and without question have the silkiest, most melting texture of any pear. Plus, their flesh has very few sclerenchyma cells: these are the gritty little stone cells that many other varieties of pears display so noticeably in their texture. While these cells detract from a pear’s melting texture, they are the source of a pear’s food fiber, which includes pectin, gums, cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignins.