Southern Pear Salad – Southern Bite

This Southern Pear Salad is a vintage recipe that combines canned pears, mayonnaise, cheese, and cherries for a dish that’s as whimsical as it is delicious.

You know that we Southerners have been known to smack the word “salad” on a variety of things that are clearly not salads. Things like ambrosia, pineapple and walnut salad, and strawberry and pretzel salad immediately spring to mind. Like I said before, I think eating them makes us feel better.

Well folks, of all the weird salads we claim down here, this one is probably one of the most quirky. Well, admittedly, lettuce is involved here. So I think the lettuce terminology is more appropriate in this case than some of the others. However, this random collection of ingredients is just plain weird.

This recipe tops a salad with canned pear halves, mayonnaise, cheddar cheese and a maraschino cherry.

But strange as it sounds, almost every true southerner I know knew exactly what I was talking about when I said “pear salad”. It was a dish commonplace at potlucks, church dinners, and family gatherings. Many people remember that this was a “company dish”. You know, one of those fancy recipes we only serve to guests.

And I’ll gladly admit that I hadn’t tried this dish until I started working on it for this post — although I saw it everywhere as a kid. Well, you all know I love mayo, but something about the canned pears just turned me off.

But as part of my commitment to my craft, I always promise that the recipes posted here will be tested and tried many times before they make it onto the blog. So I liked it. And honestly, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. The pear wasn’t as sweet as I thought it would be, and the cheese and mayo honestly kind of worked. The cherry wasn’t exactly my favorite part, but I understand that it was included – at least for the color and an attempt to make this dish a little more “fancy”.