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Dessert

Canned Pear Mould I

A molded custard dessert with canned pears, gelatine, and pear juice, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Canned Pear Mould I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Drain the jar of canned pears.

  2. Make 2 cups of custard.

  3. Dissolve ½ oz of gelatine in 1 cup of pear juice and add it to the custard.

Set and decorate

  1. Pour the custard into a wet mould and allow it to set.

  2. Once firm, turn out the custard.

  3. Dip the pears in a little pear juice mixed with a few drops of yellow food coloring.

  4. Arrange the pears on the custard.

  5. Place a small mould of pear jelly in the center.

  6. Decorate with whipped cream using a piping bag.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Pear + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the custard into a firm, sliceable structure once chilled.
Custard
Forms the creamy base that the mousse is set and shaped from.
Canned pears
Provide the fruit flavour and sweetness that stand out in the dish.
Whipped cream
Adds light, airy richness to the finished decoration.

The step that matters

Pour the custard into a wet mould and allow it to set. Gelatine needs to be fully dissolved and then given time to cool and firm before unmoulding. Turning out too early can cause the custard to tear or collapse, while a dry mould can make release difficult.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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