What Are Pears and How Can I Use Them?

Bartlett pears are the soft, bell-shaped, classic supermarket pear, known as Williams pears outside North America. They start grass-green and ripen to a clear yellow, sometimes with a red blush, turning juicy, buttery, and deeply aromatic.

This is the taste most people mean by "pear."

It is also the pear most people picture when they shop, and the variety canned and pureed commercially, because the flesh cooks down smoothly and the perfume survives heat.

Unlike crisp pears such as Bosc or Anjou, a Bartlett goes genuinely soft when ripe. That softness is the point for eating out of hand, but it changes how you cook with it.

Dried pears are fresh pears with most of their water removed, leaving chewy, leathery pieces with a concentrated honeyed sweetness. Bartlett and Bosc are the usual varieties, sliced into halves or rings and dried until pliable but no longer wet.

Drying turns the soft, juicy fruit into something denser and more intense. A fresh pear is delicate and floral; the dried version tastes deeper and almost caramel-like, with a gentle tang that keeps it from being cloying.

They hold that flavor for months, which is the whole appeal.