Pear And Blue Cheese Salad

Main Course, Salads

Ripe pear slices and crumbled Roquefort on a bed of mixed bitter leaves, mâche, frisée, and radicchio, scattered with toasted walnuts and dressed with a proper walnut oil vinaigrette. Sweet against sharp, soft against crunchy. This classic French salad takes 15 minutes and is one of those combinations that just works every single time.

Pin recipe Print

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 5 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

Servings 4 As starter

Ingredients 

1x2x3x?

For the salad

• 2 pears ripe but firm
• 120 gr Roquefort
• 80 gr walnuts
• 60 gr lamb's lettuce
• 40 gr curly endive
• 40 gr radicchio
• 1 squeeze lemon juice to stop the pear browning

For the walnut vinaigrette

• 3 tbsp walnut oil
• 1 tbsp olive oil or neutral oil
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt and black pepper

Equipment

• frying pan for toasting the walnuts
• jar or small bowl for the vinaigrette
• knife
• chopping board
• large salad bowl or 4 individual plates

Instructions

• 1. Toast the walnuts

  Put the walnuts in a dry frying pan over a medium heat. Toast for 3–4 minutes, shaking the pan regularly, until they're golden and smell nutty. Watch them closely, they go from toasted to burnt faster than you'd think. Tip onto a plate and leave to cool, then roughly break them up with your hands.
• 2. Make the vinaigrette

  Whisk together the Dijon mustard and red wine vinegar in a small bowl. Add the walnut oil and olive oil in a slow stream, whisking as you go, until you have a smooth, emulsified dressing. Season well with salt and pepper. Taste it, it should be sharp and nutty, with a bit of backbone from the mustard.
• 3. Prepare the pear

  Core the pears and slice them thinly, around 5mm. You don't need to peel them. Toss the slices very briefly in a little lemon juice to stop them going brown. Don't drown them in it; you just want a light coating.
• 4. Assemble

  Dress the leaves lightly with about two thirds of the vinaigrette and toss gently. Divide between four plates or arrange in a large bowl. Lay the pear slices over the top, scatter over the Roquefort in rough chunks, and finish with the toasted walnuts. Drizzle the remaining vinaigrette over everything just before serving.
• 5. Serve immediately

  This salad doesn't sit well once dressed, so bring it to the table straight away. The leaves will wilt and the pear will start to soften if you leave it. Five minutes is fine. Thirty minutes is not.

Notes

• Roquefort is the traditional choice, and there’s a good reason for that, the saltiness and creaminess is hard to match. But Fourme d’Ambert works well if you want something slightly milder, or Bleu d’Auvergne if you want to stay in the AOP French blue cheese world without quite the same intensity.
• Walnut oil is non-negotiable here, really. It’s what makes the dressing taste specifically French rather than generically nice. It goes rancid quickly once opened, so keep it in the fridge.
• The leaves: mâche, frisée, and radicchio are the classic combination, and most supermarkets sell mixed bags that include all three. A bag labelled ‘bistro salad’ or ‘bitter leaves’ will do the job perfectly well.
• Add some vegetarian lardons if youfancy, pan-fried until crispy and scattered over the top while still warm. A very common French variation, and a good one

About this recipe

This pear and blue cheese salad is one of those combinations that feels like it’s always existed. Ripe fruit, sharp cheese, bitter leaves, toasted nuts, a properly made vinaigrette. Five components, each one doing a specific job, none of them interchangeable. The French have been putting versions of this on bistro menus for a very long time, and it hasn’t changed much because it doesn’t need to.

Let’s start with the pear, because it matters more than people give it credit for. France produces some of the best pears in Europe, and the Comice variety now widely available in supermarkets was actually developed in the Anjou region in 1849 at the Comice Horticole d’Angers. It was bred specifically for eating rather than cooking, with a focus on sweetness, juice content, and that particular soft texture that collapses slightly when you bite into it. For this salad, that’s exactly what you want. A hard, underripe Conference pear sitting next to a chunk of Roquefort tastes like two separate things on the same plate. A ripe Comice melts into the cheese and becomes something else entirely. Worth the extra thought at the supermarket.

Roquefort is the traditional choice for a pear and blue cheese salad, and it earns its place. It’s one of France’s oldest protected cheeses, made exclusively from Lacaune sheep’s milk and aged in the natural caves of Combalou near the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in the Aveyron. It became the first French cheese to receive AOC protection in 1925, and the rules remain strict. Only seven producers are currently authorised to make it. The caves do something to the cheese that nowhere else can replicate, and that specific sharpness and creaminess is what makes it work so well against sweet fruit.

The walnuts have their own story worth knowing. The Périgord and the Dordogne are walnut country, with production dating back to the 13th century. Noix du Périgord received its own AOP in 2002, protecting four specific varieties: the Corne, the Grandjean, the Marbot, and the Franquette. In this salad the walnuts do two things. They add crunch against the soft pear and creamy cheese, and their slight bitterness cuts through the richness in a way that, say, toasted pine nuts simply wouldn’t. Don’t skip the toasting step. Two minutes in a dry pan transforms them from fine to genuinely good.

The walnut oil in the vinaigrette is where a lot of home cooks make a substitution they shouldn’t. Olive oil is a perfectly decent salad dressing fat, but it’s not what this salad needs. Good walnut oil, cold-pressed from the Périgord if you can find it, has a depth and nuttiness that echoes the walnuts in the salad and ties everything together. It’s available in most decent supermarkets and keeps in the fridge for a few months. Worth having a bottle in the kitchen, particularly through autumn and winter when this salad earns its place on the table most.

The leaves are the part most people think about least, and probably shouldn’t. The classic French combination of mâche, frisée, and radicchio isn’t accidental. Mâche, also known as lamb’s lettuce, is soft, mild, and slightly nutty, providing a gentle base that doesn’t compete with anything else. Frisée brings bitterness and texture, its curly leaves catching the dressing in a way that flat leaves don’t. Radicchio adds colour and a more assertive bitterness that stands up to the cheese without being overwhelmed by it. Together they create something more interesting than any one of them alone. Most supermarkets sell mixed bitter leaf bags that include all three. Anything labelled “bistro salad mix” will do the job.

The Dijon mustard in the vinaigrette is also doing more than it might appear. Beyond flavour, mustard acts as an emulsifier, helping the oil and vinegar bind into a smooth, cohesive dressing rather than separating the moment it hits the plate. A properly emulsified vinaigrette coats the leaves evenly and makes everything taste more put-together. It takes about thirty seconds to do properly and makes a real difference.

As a pear and blue cheese salad goes, this one is about as classic as it gets. Simple combinations that have been refined over a long time tend to work that way. The French worked this one out ages ago and haven’t felt the need to improve on it since. That’s probably the most French thing about it.