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To Bottle Pears Pink

Pears preserved in a pink-colored syrup with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Bottle Pears Pink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Refresh the pears in two separate cold waters and drain them on a sieve.

  2. Fill the bottles carefully without pressure.

Color and seal

  1. Add enough prepared cochineal to the pears while parboiling and to the syrup for a delicate pink tinge.

  2. Cork the bottles and tie them down.

Cook

  1. Boil for 15 minutes.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main fruit body that softens during cooking and takes up the syrup and colour.
Cochineal
Gives the pears a pink colour that deepens with more added.
38 degrees syrup
Provides sweetness, and its citric acid and alum add acidity and help the fruit hold its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the cochineal. Cochineal colour is strong and hard to reverse, so adding too much turns the pears deep red rather than delicately pink. Add it gradually and check the tint as the pears parboil.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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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