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Spiced Pear Preserves

A preserve made from canned pears, sugar, ginger, cloves, lemon juice, pear liquor, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Pear Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Cut canned pears into long slices.

  2. In a kettle, combine pear liquor, ginger root, cloves, sugar, and lemon peel. Heat until the sugar melts.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the pears and simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove pears and place them in jars.

  3. Boil the syrup until thick, then pour it over the pears, filling jars to the brim and sealing immediately.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main fruit body and soft, tender texture in the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps balance the sweetness.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, spicy aroma that flavours the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration must rise enough to thicken the syrup and help preserve the fruit. Too little boiling leaves a runny preserve that may spoil, while overcooking can make it stiff or caramelised.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, clove, 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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