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Preserve

White Pears, Wet

A preserve of whole pears poached and then steeped in a thickening sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup 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 ↓

White Pears, Wet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Select fine large pears, ensuring they are tender and sweet.

  2. Prick the pears and blanch them until soft, optionally adding a little alum.

  3. Drop the blanched pears into cold water.

  4. Pare off the rind very thin and prick to the core, then place them in another pan of cold water.

  5. Heat the pears until thoroughly scalded, then transfer them back to cold water and drain.

Cook in syrup

  1. Prepare a thin syrup boiled to the 'Small Thread' and add the pears.

  2. Boil the pears in the syrup two or three times, skimming off any scum.

  3. Transfer the pears and syrup to an earthenware pan.

  4. The next day, drain off the syrup, add fresh syrup, and boil to the 'Large Thread.'

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. Sugar + syruptop 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
Provide the fruit that softens and holds its shape during cooking and syrup soaking.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the pears and preserves them by drawing out moisture.

The step that matters

Boiling the pears in the syrup and pausing overnight. Repeated boiling and standing in syrup let sugar slowly penetrate the fruit, which keeps it from shrinking or fermenting. Skimming removes scum that could spoil the preserve.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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