A choke pear or chocky-pear is an
astringent fruit. The term is used for the fruit of any variety of
pear which has an astringent taste and is difficult to swallow.
Varieties
One variety of choke pear is poire d'Angoisse, a variety of pear that was grown in
Angoisse
Angoisse (; oc, Engoissa) is a commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France.
Population
See also
*Communes of the Dordogne department
The following is a list of the 503 communes of the Dordogne department ...
, a commune in the
Arrondissement of Nontron
The arrondissement of Nontron is an Arrondissements of France, arrondissement of France in the Dordogne Departments of France, department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regions of France, region. It has 94 Communes of France, communes. Its population is ...
in
Dordogne,
France, in the
Middle Ages, which was hard, bad tasting, and almost impossible to eat raw.
In the words of
L'Académie française, the pear is "''si âpre et si revèche au goût qu'on a de la peine à l'avaler''" ("so harsh and crabbed of taste that one can only with difficulty swallow it"). These qualities, and the common meaning of ''angoisse'' in
French language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...
("anguish") apparently originated the French idiom ''avaler des poires d'angoisse'' ("swallow pears of Angoisse/anguish") meaning "to suffer great displeasures".
Possibly because of this idiom, the names "choke pear" and "
pear of anguish
The pear of anguish, also known as choke pear or mouth pear, is a device of disputed use invented in the early modern period. The mechanism consists of a pear-shaped metal body divided into spoon-like segments that can be spread apart with a spr ...
" have been used for a gagging device allegedly used in Europe, sometime before the 17th century.
Dalechamps has identified this with the species of pear that
Pliny the Elder listed as "ampullaceum" in his ''
Naturalis Historia''. It, like most sour-tasting pear cultivars, was most likely used to make
perry.
Similar fruits
Similarly named trees with astringent fruits include the
choke cherry
''Prunus virginiana'', commonly called bitter-berry, chokecherry, Virginia bird cherry, and western chokecherry (also black chokecherry for ''P. virginiana'' var. ''demissa''), is a species of bird cherry (''Prunus'' subgenus ''Padus'') nat ...
(the common name for several species of
cherry
A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit).
Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The nam ...
tree that grow in North America and whose fruits are small and bitter tasting: ''Prunus virginiana'', ''Prunus demissa'', and ''Prunus serotina'') and the choke plum.
References
External links
*
Pears
Roman cuisine
Plant common names
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