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Dessert

Pear Chips

Pear Chips are preserved pears boiled with sugar, ginger, lemon rind, and water for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pear Chips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the pears into small pieces and cut the lemon rind.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the lemons.

  3. Cut the ginger root into small pieces and parboil it.

Cook and jar

  1. Drain the water from the ginger and mix it with the pears and sugar.

  2. Boil all ingredients together for 3 hours.

  3. Transfer to jars and cover.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
Main fruit; it softens during the long boil and forms the thick body of the preserve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates in the boil, thickens the mixture and helps preserve it.
Green ginger root
Adds a sharp, warm aroma and a spicy bite that balances the sweetness.
Lemons
Juice and rind add acidity and brightness, balancing the sugar and helping the fruit set.

The step that matters

Boil all ingredients together for 3 hours. As water evaporates, the sugar becomes more concentrated and the fruit thickens. Heat that is too high or uneven can scorch the sugar and pears on the bottom of the pan, so the mixture should be stirred and kept at a steady simmer.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, lemon. 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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