Name: Flan De Poires
Ingredients: 10 pears (Martin-sec or Rousselet); 2 liters water; 400 grams sugar

Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Flan De Poires

Ingredients

10 pears (Martin-sec or Rousselet)
2 liters water
400 grams sugar

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Poach the pears

Peel the pears and place them in a 2-liter pot.
Add 2 liters of water and 400 grams of sugar.
Simmer on low heat for 1 hour, checking for doneness.

Assemble and glaze

Drain the pears and place them in a prepared apple flan.
Strain the syrup through a fine sieve.
Reduce the syrup until it reaches 32 °C.
Let it cool, then drizzle the syrup over the pears and apples.

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.

Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears: Soften as they poach and provide the main fruit flavour and texture of the flan.
Sugar: Sweetens the poaching liquid and thickens into a glaze as the syrup reduces.

“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.