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Dessert

Of Peares, and Appulles

Roasted pears and apples served with sugar or comfits, sprinkled with fennel or anise seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and fennel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Of Peares, and Appulles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Choose ripe, sweet pears that are not stony.

  2. Serve them with sugar or comfits, or sprinkle with fennel seeds or anise seeds.

  3. For better digestion, roast or bake the pears before serving.

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. Pear + fenneltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

  3. Sugar + fenneltop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together408 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

Mellow pears
Ripe, sweet pears provide the main flavour and soft texture once roasted.

Swap the fennel

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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