On Poaching Fruit by bookseller

...you can poach just about any non-berry fruit (and you can poach berries, too, but you get pie-filling), though depending on what kind of apples you have, they might do better as apple sauce. If you wanted to make apple-pearsauce, that would be delicious, too: Just core and slice the fruit (peeled or not -- if the fruit haven't been sprayed, I tend to leave peels on) and put them in a big pot (nonstick, ideally) with a splash -- really, just a splash -- of water or cider or apple juice or white wine or whatever you have around, and a fistful of sugar (brown would be nice). If you would like to spice things up a bit, you could add two or three whole cloves, a cinnamon stick, a vanilla bean that you have slit in half the long way and scraped the seeds from (into the pot) with the point of a knife (throw the scraped bean in as well), some strips of lemon zest (that's the yellow part of the rind, none of the white pith that lies just beneath), five or six green cardomoms that you have cracked with the flat of a heavy knife or the bottom of a pan, maybe 1/4 teaspoon of powdered ginger (or say 1/3 cup of crystalized ginger -- that would be delicious) or an inch of fresh ginger (sliced but no need to peel). The fancy way to add these spices is to tie them into a square of muslin or cheesecloth, so that you can just pull the spices out when everything is cooked, but that's not really necessary, though if you throw in whole cloves or cardomoms or pieces of vanilla bean, etc., you might want to fish them out before you mash. Anyway, any of those spicing options would be delicious, and you could even combine them -- lemon and cloves and vanilla? Cardomom and ginger?

Put the pot over low heat, covered, for maybe 15 minutes, which should be long enough for the fruit to start giving up its liquid. It will look quite dry at first, and you'll be tempted to add more water/cider, but you really won't need to; the fruit has plenty of liquid of its own. But if you do, it's not a problem; if the sauce winds up with more liquid than you'd like, once the apples/pears are cooked, you can just turn the heat up under the pot and boil away the excess. Anyway, just keep cooking it until the apples/pears are soft enough to mush. Taste it periodically to see if you'd like to add more sugar or maybe a splash of lemon juice. It's enormously forgiving; you can add some sugar now and then more again in 20 minutes, etc. When the fruit is soft, mash it as you'd like. I like my applesauce kinda chunky, so I go at it right in the pot with an old-school potato-masher, but you could chuck everything in the blender (LET IT COOL A LITTLE FIRST) if you want things smooth (you will REALLY want to pull the whole spices/fresh ginger out first, if you go that route). I can't really give you times or amounts of sugar, because different apples and pears break down at very different rates, and require very different amounts of sweetening. Also, how sweet you'd like it is really up to you.

Once it's mashed, let it cool, and then, if you want to booze things up, add whatever appeals -- brandy, Amaretto, a handful of raisins or chopped dried figs that you have soaked till soft in rum. Up to you. It's all good.

Baked apples I have never loved, but poached whole pears are a classic Eastern European dessert, and a lovely thing. For half a dozen pears, I'd make a brew of roughly 2 cups of wine (dry Marsala would be nice -- I'd stay away from dessert wines, and whites rather than reds are traditional, but there's no need to hew to tradition) and 2 cups water, a scant cup of sugar, one or two sticks of cinnamon, a vanilla bean (halved and scraped, as above), and maybe a couple of cloves and/or some lemon or orange zest (peel it off with a vegetable peeler and use a paring knife to scrape off any enormous bits of white stuff; it doesn't matter if the strips you get are big or small, thin or fat). Bring this to a boil in a largeish PAN -- not a pot -- you want something wide enough to accommodate all the pears in one layer. While that's coming to a boil, core the pears FROM THE BOTTOM (leave the stem intact). I like to peel them from the stem end about halfway or two-thirds way down, so they still have some skin on at the bottom. Don't worry how ragged your coring job is; nobody will see it.

Once the brew has come to a boil and all the sugar is dissolved, pop your pears in, turn the heat down quite low (you want a slow simmer) and cover the pot. Let everything simmer for perhaps 20 minutes, turning the pears at the ten-minute mark. At 20 minutes, test the pears with the point of a knife; if everything's tender all the way in, you're done. Take the pears out with, ideally, a slotted spoon (if you use a regular spoon, it ain't the end of the world), turn the heat back up and boil the brew hard, UNCOVERED, for maybe 10 minutes, until it has the consistency of, say, melted jelly (you don't really want the consistency of honey or maple syrup -- that's too thick). Taste it (use a wooden spoon, to avoid burning your lips, and blow on it first). You might want to add a little lemon juice or perhaps some honey, even a slug of Calvados, should you have some lying around, or rum or brandy. Pour in any juice that the pears have given off while sitting on the counter, and stir up the syrup. Let it cool to room temp, pour it all over the pears, cover, and put in the fridge overnight to chill. You can eat them cold or nuked, with whipped cream, creme fraiche, Greek yogurt, with a sprinkle of toasted walnuts, a drizzle of honey. You can take the pears out again, nuke them (I'd opt for medium power) and boil the syrup down again till it really does thicken, and pour that over the pears. With some vanilla ice cream? MAMA! Or hold the ice cream, put the pears on plates standing up with a few toasted nuts scattered around, and you have an elegant dessert that would be at home in Paris or Prague or Poland.

You can also do this in the oven, with the pears standing up in a roasting pan that you cover with tinfoil. If you do that, you can first stuff the pears (where you've cored them) with, oh, some toasted walnuts and butter and brown sugar mixed together, or with dried fruit plumped in brandy, etc. That's very swanky, but frankly, I tend to like the simpler, unstuffed, stove-top method best.