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Dessert

Pear Butter

A cooked, sweetened, spiced preserve made from pears.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pear Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel, core, and slice the pears.

  2. Place the pears in a preserving kettle with a little water and cook slowly until soft.

Cook the butter

  1. Add sugar, using 1 cup for every 1 quart of sliced pears, and continue cooking very slowly, stirring frequently, for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. The mixture should be smooth and have the consistency of thick apple sauce.

  3. Stir in a little lemon juice and spices to taste.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the hot butter into hot sterilized containers and cover with paraffin, or sterilize with steam as directed for apple butter.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main body and fruit flavour, breaking down into a smooth, thick texture when cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with long cooking, helps thicken the mixture into a spreadable butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Slow cooking with frequent stirring. Cooking slowly over a long period lets the pears break down and the liquid evaporate gradually. Frequent stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the kettle, which would give a burnt taste and dark colour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, ginger, cinnamon. 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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