Name: Baked Pears
Ingredients: Pears; Sugar; Water

Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Pears
Sugar
Water

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Layer pears in a stone jar without peeling.
Add a layer of sugar on top of the pears.
Repeat layers until the jar is full.
Pour in enough water to fill the jar.

Bake

Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for three hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

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 turns tender and sweet as it bakes slowly.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw out juice, aiding the syrup that forms around the fruit.
Water: Creates moisture in the jar so the pears cook gently and do not dry out.

“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.