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Dessert

Stewed Pears

A sweet dish of pears simmered in sugar water, optionally flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Pare the pears carefully, keeping them smooth and unbroken.

  2. Drop the pears into boiling water with added sugar until nearly covered.

  3. Cover the pan and boil until the pears are perfectly tender.

  4. If desired, add a part of a vanilla bean while boiling.

Make the canning syrup

  1. For canning, prepare a syrup with 2.5 pounds of sugar and 2 quarts of water.

  2. Weigh the sugar and mix it with water in a preserving pan, covered.

Can the pears

  1. Pare, halve, and core the pears, leaving the stems intact.

  2. When the syrup boils, add the pears and boil covered until nearly done.

  3. Prepare glass quart cans in boiling water, filling them as the fruit cooks.

  4. Strain the syrup using a heated pitcher and wire sieve to remove fruit particles.

  5. Fill and cover the cans quickly, leaving some syrup for baked pears if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pear + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pears
Their firm flesh holds its shape while simmering and softens to a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and gives the cooking liquid body as a syrup.
Vanilla bean
Adds a warm, floral aroma to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until perfectly tender, not beyond. Pears need enough heat and time to soften as the starch and cell walls break down, but overcooking makes them mushy and causes them to fall apart. Keeping the pan covered holds steady heat so the fruit cooks evenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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