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 ↓
Dried Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the pears.
In a kettle, combine the pears, water, and sugar.
Cook until the pears are transparent.
Dry
Remove the pears, drain them, and lay them out to dry.
Rub sugar on the pears every day or two.
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 + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 main body of the dried fruit and become tender and translucent as they cook.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the pears and helps preserve them as moisture is drawn out during drying.
The step that matters
Cook until the pears are transparent. Cooking the pears in syrup softens them and replaces some water with sugar. Stopping too early leaves them firm, while overcooking can make them mushy and fall apart.
“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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