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Dessert

Preserved Pears

A method of preserving pears in a sugar syrup, optionally flavored with cloves and lemon.

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 ↓

Preserved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare the pears thinly.

  2. Set the pears aside.

  3. Parboil pears until tender before preserving if they are hard.

  4. Cut large pears into halves or slices for quicker cooking.

  5. Stick a clove in the blossom end of each pear for added flavor.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 1 cup water and 1 pound sugar in a pot to make syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup.

  3. Skim the syrup until clarified.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the pears to the syrup.

  2. Add the juice and rind of 1 lemon for every 5 pounds of fruit for additional flavor.

  3. Stew gently until 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 is cooked until tender and clear in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, preserves it by drawing out moisture.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup the pears cook in.

The step that matters

Stew gently until clear. Simmering slowly lets sugar syrup penetrate the fruit evenly and softens it without breaking the pieces apart. Boiling hard can make the pears ragged and cloudy.

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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