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Dessert

Pink Fancy Pears

Preserved pears in hot syrup colored pink with Carmine or Cudbear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and wine work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 223 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Pink Fancy Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Blanch the pears and cool them in water.

  2. Place the pears in earthenware jars.

Colour and syrup

  1. Pour hot syrup over the pears.

  2. Add Carmine for pink color or Cudbear for wine red color.

  3. Mix in 1/8 ounce of alum per gallon of syrup to fix the color.

  4. Optionally, use aniline colors for even coverage.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 absorbs the syrup and colour and becomes tender when cooked.
Hot syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, carrying the colour into the fruit.
Alum
Acts as a mordant that helps fix the colour to the fruit.
Carmine
Supplies the pink colour.
Cudbear
Supplies the wine red colour.

The step that matters

Mix in the alum with the syrup. Alum must be measured per gallon of syrup and dissolved evenly so the colour sets consistently; too little leaves the colour unfixed, too much can make the fruit taste harsh.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, wine):

  1. Pearthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, wine. 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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