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Praline and Chocolate Pear with Coffee and Blackberry Macaron

Tender poached pears combine with crunchy praline and smooth caramel sauce - the tiny macarons are a beautiful touch.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 29 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and chocolate match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,497 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep2 hr
Cook2 hr

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Pour the wine into a pan with 75g sugar, the cracked cardamom pods, one cinnamon stick, the split vanilla pods, the bay leaf, the chilli, and the lemon juice. Add enough water to cover the pears, then bring to a simmer.

  2. Peel the pears, leaving the stems on, and add them to the simmering liquid. Poach gently for 20 to 25 minutes until tender, then leave to cool in the liquid.

  3. For the praline, melt 100g caster sugar in a dry pan until golden, stir in the blanched hazelnuts and almonds, and pour onto parchment to set. Once cold, blitz to a coarse powder.

  4. Warm the goats' milk with the second cinnamon stick, golden syrup, and 100g caster sugar until dissolved. Cool, then churn in an ice cream machine, or freeze in a tray and stir every 30 minutes until set.

  5. Simmer the blackberries with 25g caster sugar for 5 minutes, then push through a sieve to make a purée and let it cool.

  6. Mix 100g ground almonds, 100g icing sugar, the baking powder and the instant coffee dissolved in a splash of water. Whisk the egg whites with 15g caster sugar to firm peaks and fold in the dry mix.

  7. Pipe small rounds onto parchment-lined trays, rest for 30 minutes, then bake at 150°C (300°F) for 14 to 16 minutes until set. Cool, then sandwich with a little blackberry purée mixed with some of the 200ml double cream whipped with 50g icing sugar.

  8. Melt the dark chocolate with the butter and 50ml double cream, then stir in half the praline. Drain the pears and serve them with the chocolate sauce, a spoonful of milk ice cream, the macarons and the remaining praline.

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Coffee + chocolatetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  2. Pear + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together19,175 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Cinnamon + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Vanilla + chocolatetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,018 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, syrup, cinnamon, pear, white wine, vanilla):

  1. Almondbetter flavor fit
  2. Chestnutbetter flavor fit
  3. Hazelnutthe original
  4. Pecansabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, syrup, cinnamon, pear, white wine, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).