Savory Fruit Ideas for Personal Chefs by Ruth Paget
I re-read Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book with more than 400 recipes for both sweet and savory dishes as follow-up reading to my Wisconsin 2026 Dairyland Vacation.
Wisconsin shares the same fall bumper crops with California, and I was looking up savory fruit recipes for apples, pears, plums, and cherries in Grigson’s go-to fruit recipe book featuring mostly European dishes, especially those of France.
Stand-out recipes that help deal with a surfeit of fruit follow:
*For apples
*Cauchoise Salad with Avocado Cream
-This dish comes from the Pays de Caux (chalk country) north of Rouen, France in Normandy where my husband Laurent went to business school.
-This salad is made with a topping of celery, potatoes, apples, lemon juice, walnuts, and cubes of smoked country ham that is served over lettuce. The dressing is based on vinegar and oil with avocado blended in.
*Normandy Pork with Apples and Cream
-This dish is made with pork tenderloin, onions, Calvados (apple brandy), cider, beef stock, and double cream mixed in once the pork is cooked.
-The dish is garnished with sautéed, sliced apples
*For Pears
*Pickled pears to served with ham, salt pork, or duck
-For this dish, you pickle pears in a solution of sugar, vinegar, water, cloves, all spice, and cinnamon sticks
*For Plums
*Pork in the Vosges Style
-This dish calls for yellow mirabelle plums and 3 cooking vessels.
-First, you brown the pork in a Dutch oven and cook it with 2 cups of white wine either stovetop or in the oven.
-Then, you sauté chopped onions slightly in one pan and simmer the mirabelle plums in water in another pan
-When the pork is done cooking, you place the onions on a serving platter with the pork on top of the onions. Next, you place the plums around the pork with the mirabelle cooking juices spooned over the pork.
*For Cherries
*Pickled cherries can be served as part of an hors d’oeuvres tray to go with sparkling wines and kirs made with sweet white wines.
-These cherries are preserved in a solution made up of white wine vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, juniper berries, lemon peel, and cinnamon sticks
Note: The French routinely use surplus fruit to make brandies, eau-de-vie for drinking or cooking (calvados-apple brandy, Poire-Williams – pear brandy, mirabelle – yellow plum brandy, and kirsch – cherry brandy)
Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book mostly provides recipes for sweet dishes, but her savory fruit recipes not only taste good, but they can save you money when they arrive in fall. (I am assuming that abundant supply keeps the price down.)
Fruit lovers and personal chefs can find many creative ways to deal with seasonal fruit for immediate consumption and to preserve for the winter months in Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book. Restaurants and personal chefs might be interested in offering pickled fruit products as add-on products using the recipes in Grigson’s book as well.
By Ruth Paget
-author Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Marrying France, and Europe’s Lessons written during overseas duty in Germany + 5 other Kindle books
-developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games + 8 Classical Western Civilization War Games
-developer of food and beverage knowledge games
-creator of online exhibits about San Miguel Arcangel Mission, French baguette making, and the Carmel Valley History Center
-creator of French travel and culture games
-writer of 1900+ Central Coast California lifestyle blogs
-family genealogist
-developer of 9 music theory games
