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Dessert

Compote of Pears a LA Zingara

A compote of pears and oranges glazed in syrup and flavored with brandy, garnished with angelica and damson cheese or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and angelica work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Compote of Pears a LA Zingara

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Simmer thick slices of pears in syrup until tender.

  2. Glaze the pears in their own syrup.

  3. Prepare slices of oranges similarly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the pears and oranges alternately in a dish, stacking them three tiers high.

  2. Decorate with angelica on the oranges and damson cheese or currant jelly on the pears.

  3. Pour syrup flavored with Dantzic brandy around the base.

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. Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pear + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pear + cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  4. Pear + angelicatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Pear + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Hold their shape when simmered and provide the main body of the dish.
Syrup
Sweetens and moistens the fruit while it simmers and glazes the pears.
Slices of oranges
Add acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup and pears.
Damson cheese or currant jelly
Adds concentrated fruit flavor and a glossy finish to the pears.
Dantzic brandy
Adds aroma to the syrup poured around the base of the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer the pears until tender. Pears cook unevenly by thickness and ripeness. Simmering gently keeps the slices intact while the starches soften, so they hold their shape when stacked. Boiling vigorously can break them apart.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, syrup, orange, cheese, brandy):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, syrup, orange, cheese, brandy. 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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