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Dessert

Baked Pears

A baked pear dessert with brown sugar and water, finished with white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Baked Pears

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

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the pears and place them in a pan.

  2. Add the brown sugar and water to the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the pears are tender.

  2. Once cool, sift white sugar over 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.

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.

  1. 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 dish's main body, softening into tender fruit as they bake.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the pears and adds caramel-like flavour as it melts into the cooking liquid.
Water
Creates moist cooking liquid that helps the pears soften evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until the pears are tender. Pears need enough time in gentle heat for the starches and cell walls to soften. Stopping early leaves them firm, while over-baking can make them mushy and collapse.

“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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