We've always thought the European pear (as opposed to its expensive Asian cousin) was more forgiving. It keeps well in a cool environment, allowing a producer to stretch the season for months. It ripens off the tree so you can pick it when mature and still get it to the store before it's at its best. You'd think it would be a grocer's dream.

But we've learned that a pear is finicky, and it's unlikely that a supermarket specimen will get the care it needs. A pear bruises easily, for one thing. Producers need to handle them carefully, says Alice Waters in , to deliver a good product. As always, we urge you to evaluate vendors with the samples they offer. And though you can ripen pears in your home by snuggling them into a paper bag, Paul Bertolli writes in Cooking by Hand that getting the pears perfectly ripe can be frustrating. "Patient waiting, sometimes for weeks, often produces no observable change," he complains, "whereas it is also common to return, after what seems like a matter of hours, to find fruit that has transformed to a musky mess."

Photos by Melissa Schneider

Chez Panisse Fruit