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Dessert

Preserved Pears

Pears preserved in clarified white sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Preserved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears and cut them in half, if preferred.

  2. Soak the pears in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Pour clarified syrup of white sugar over the pears.

  2. Boil the pears in the syrup for a short time.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bartlett pear + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes
  3. Bartlett pear + syruptop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Bartlett pears
The main fruit, which softens and becomes tender as it cooks in the syrup.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, draws water out of it to help preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil the pears in the syrup for a short time. Boiling too long breaks down the pear's cell walls, so the fruit turns soft and mushy. Keeping the boil brief helps the pears hold their shape while they absorb the sugar.

Swap the bartlett pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Bartlett pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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