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Dessert

Pear Marmalade

A preserved fruit spread made from pears, lemon rind, bitter almonds, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pear Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the lemon rind and bitter almonds in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the rind and almonds.

  3. Add 1 pound of sugar and boil until dissolved.

Cook the pears

  1. Stir in the juice of 3 lemons and the pear chips.

  2. Simmer gently until the pear chips are transparent.

  3. Store the marmalade in jars.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + peartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together175 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 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
Provide the bulk and body of the marmalade as they soften and set into pieces.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps preserve it while it thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and supports setting.
Bitter almonds
Contribute a distinctive bitter, aromatic flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the pear chips are transparent. Gentle heat lets sugar slowly penetrate the pear tissue, making it translucent, while a hard boil breaks the pieces down into mush or scorches the sugar.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, almond, 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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