Why it works: Pear and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 942 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓
Steamed Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Cut hard pears lengthwise into halves and peel them thinly, placing each half in cold water to prevent browning.
Place the pear halves in a steamer, adding 2 teaspoons of sugar and a small piece of lemon in the center of each half.
Add a little cold water to the steamer, as the pears will release juice.
Prepare the pears in the morning and refrigerate them after cooling for a refreshing dessert at tea time.
Carefully remove the pear halves from the steamer to avoid breaking them.
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.
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Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together942 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Applefits better
- Plumfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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