PEARSMesh cooked and peeled pears without core together with pepper, cumin, honey, passum, liquamen, and oil. Add eggs and heat. Serve with a sprinkle of pepper.
Tastewise, I personally prefer pears to apricots. But pears also mean that cold weather is near, so you could say that they are a bittersweet sort of fruit.
I never did think it was necessary to put pepper on fruit dishes, but it is has become such a common practice that people have grown accustomed to the taste. The mistress harshly chastised me for leaving it off once.
I actually don't see anything wrong with eating the fruit pure, plain, and ripe from the trees. Pears are a sacred, beautiful fruit, the fruit of the lovely Hera and Aphrodite. Why not enjoy the symbols of these goddesses in an unmarred form?
Perhaps eating fruit raw is too similar to the habits of the poor. Pepper is an expensive spice, so I suppose it is good to develop a taste for it to show your status when you are out or entertaining in the home.
I do not like it because it is a common practice for unskilled cooks in rich houses to extravagantly pepper their foods in order to disguise their inferior cooking. I have no need to resort to such wiles.
