Cool, juicy pears, cold ice-cream, hot chocolate sauce and a crunchy garnish – the perfect pudding

It’s always slightly embarrassing to realise that you’ve missed a pop culture reference, even if it’s 162 years old, so I won’t dwell on the fact that until last week I was unaware of the existence of Offenbach’s 1864 operetta about Helen of Troy, La Belle Hélène, after which today’s dish is named. In any case, the great French chef Escoffier was so moved by it, or perhaps by its popularity among Parisian diners, to name this simple dessert of vanilla-scented poached pears topped with hot chocolate sauce after the work’s heroine, played by the comely Hortense Schneider.

Though other homages (he includes no fewer than five dishes with that name in his 1907 Guide Culinaire, none of which involve pears) may, like the music, have faded from public consciousness, this particular pairing, if you’ll forgive the pun, has stood the test of time. As Nigel Slater observes in Tender: Volume 2, “The marriage of pears and chocolate is extraordinary. It is as if they were made for each other.” This, I think, is the duo at its “most sumptuous”.

A smooth and satisfying soup in nine easy steps

Pumpkin soup, so delicious in theory – sweet, velvety, lightly autumnal – is so often disappointing in reality. Thin in flavour and consistency, thanks to squash’s high water content, it’s likely to make even the most conscientious cook regret not chucking those Halloween offcuts on the compost heap when they had the chance. This, I hope it goes without saying, is not that sort of pumpkin soup.

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4-6

After the death of my beloved dog, I’m thinking a lot about the role food plays in all of life’s big events – be they happy or sad

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

I lost my beloved cairn terrier Wilf a couple of weeks ago, and when I say lost, sadly, I don’t mean I mislaid him yet again on Hampstead Heath. Rather, after 13 and a half years of (mostly) civil disobedience, we had to make the tough but ultimately kind decision to say a final goodbye. Since then, I have been bombarded with kindness. Friends and family have rallied round to take me out for breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee, clearly worried that the bereavement might affect my appetite – well, apart from the one who responded by having a baby a week early, and who now requires me to provide for her.

It got me thinking about the part food plays in big life events. We so often cook, or otherwise provide for people in the aftermath of such shocks, be they happy or sad, as a way both to offer practical help and to show them how much we love them. Such tokens of affection tend to fall into two camps. The first is high-energy food that can be easily eaten with one hand while the other is holding a baby or clutching a sodden handkerchief, or simply when you’re just too busy to sit down. Just this morning, I received a picture of the new mother tucking into my extremely wholesome fruit and nut-packed granola with her daughter sleeping on her arm, but Melissa Hemsley’s five-ingredient flapjacks (pictured top) would fall into this category, as would Meera Sodha’s chaat masala popcorn and Thomasina Miers’ dark chocolate and toasted walnut banana bread. Like Anna Jones’s chocolate chip cookie power bites, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s spiced nuts or my own kale chips, they’re full of good things, and tempting enough to compete with the less nutritious options that are so easy to reach for instead. (That said, no one should judge anyone for the choices they make at times of stress.)