French · Dessert
Poires Belle Helene
Vanilla-poached pears, cold ice cream, hot dark chocolate — Escoffier's opera dessert reduced to its perfect triangle of temperatures
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
- Williams or Comice pears, ripe but firm — 4
- Water — 1 L
- Caster sugar — 300 g
- Vanilla pod — 1
- Lemon — 1 (juice and peel)
- Sauce: dark chocolate 70% — 150 g
- Double cream — 120 ml
- Whole milk — 60 ml
- Unsalted butter — 15 g
- Vanilla ice cream — 500 ml
- Toasted flaked almonds — 30 g
Method
- Peel pears whole, stalk on; core from beneath with a melon baller; rub with lemon.
- Simmer water, sugar, split vanilla and lemon peel 5 min.
- Poach pears submerged (cartouche on top) at 85 °C for 20–30 min until a knife slides in easily.
- Cool the pears in their syrup (ideally overnight — they candy slightly).
- Sauce: melt chocolate with cream and milk to 60 °C; mount with butter — glossy and pourable.
- Drain pears well; stand each in a coupe on a scoop of ice cream.
- Pour the hot sauce over at the table; almonds after the pour.