Comice Pear

Comice pear, formally Doyenne du Comice, has a real, specifically documented discovery story. It arose as an unrecorded seedling in the garden of the Comice Horticole, a horticultural society in Angers, France, first noticed around 1840 and fruiting for the first time in 1848 or 1849. Two real, named individuals — Hilaire Dhomme, a local horticulturist, and Pierre-Aime Millet de la Turtaudiere, a naturalist and secretary of the Comice Horticole — studied and championed the new fruit, presenting it at the 1849 Angers Horticultural Festival under the name it still carries, "Doyenne du Comice," honoring the society that discovered it. A commemorative plaque in the Loire region still documents the discovery today. The variety reached England soon after and the United States by 1852, and its reputation only grew from there — the London Horticultural Journal declared it the best pear in the world in 1894, a real, documented assessment rather than modern marketing. In the US it is sometimes sold under the name Royal Riviera. The fruit is large, broad, and unevenly cup-shaped, with yellow-green skin often blushed red-brown, and medium-firm, very juicy white-to-yellow flesh with an exceptional sweet-tangy flavor that has earned it a genuine reputation as one of the finest-tasting pears grown anywhere. It remains a real favorite for classic holiday gift boxes specifically because of that reputation.