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Dessert

Pear Preserves

A method for preserving pears in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pear Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pears thinly and remove any blemishes.

  2. For added flavor, insert a clove into the blossom end of each pear.

  3. If using large pears, cut them into halves or slices for quicker cooking.

  4. If using hard pears, parboil them until tender before adding to the syrup.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of water and 1 pound of sugar to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup and skim off any foam until clarified.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pears to the syrup and simmer gently until they are clear.

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 + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provide the fruit that softens and turns clear as it simmers in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, at high concentration, helps preserve the fruit.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup the pears cook in.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until clarified. Foam on boiling syrup contains impurities that would cloud the preserves. Removing it while the syrup boils keeps the syrup clear, so the pears look translucent and clean.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, 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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