Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Sweet, succulent and refreshing—a ripe pear is a thing of beauty. Unripe pears, on the other hand, are not nearly as rewarding.

As ubiquitous as they are come fall, pears remain a bit of an enigma. Why are they so hard when you buy them? Why do they seemingly take forever to ripen? Why do they finally ripen exactly when you ...