5) Poisonous Purple Pears
The Georgian era (1714 – 1830) was an interesting time for food. In many ways it was ahead of its time. Cooks of the age, for example, recommended cooking vegetables for a short time and with little liquid, much as we do now. Open-air markets sold fruits sourced from across the empire. And “ices” (much like ice cream) arrived from France and Italy as an after-dinner delicacy. In other ways, however, the era was rather backwards. Not least because it was during the Georgian period that a poisonous recipe came to be published in a household cookbook.
The toxic speciality in question is the dish known as stewed warden pears. According to the recipe, you take six large winter pears, peel them, quarter them, drizzle them in cloves, lemon peel, sugar, and red wine, and then leave them to stew in a large dish covered by a pewter lid. Charmingly, being left to stew beneath a pewter lid will cause the pears to turn purple. Less charmingly, the reason the pears turn purple is that they become infused with the pewter’s tin, copper, and lead.
This leads us to the main downside of this dish: that it will inevitably and unavoidably kill anyone who eats it. As the lead from the pewter mixes with the acid in the pears, the seemingly harmless stewed fruit becomes fertile ground for lead poisoning. I’ve yet to come across anything linking any particular deaths with the dish. But considering its toxicity was only discovered retrospectively, we shouldn’t rule anything out.
The inventor of this toxic speciality was Hannah Glasse (1708 – 1770), the author of the cookery book of the age The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple. Glasse had a hard life. Despite clearly being a born entrepreneur, luck was seldom on her side. And at the age of 49 a series of failed business ventures resulted in her first having to sell her copyright for the Art of Cookery before having to spend a brief stint in two of London’s debtors’ prisons.
Nevertheless, Glasse has gone down a treat in history; or at least more than her poisonous pears. One critic has cited her as the original domestic goddess; another as the mother of the modern dinner party. One thing’s for sure: of all the weird and wonderful recipes she invented there’s one you’d do well to steer clear of.