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Dessert

Gingered Pears

A boiled pear dessert flavored with candied ginger, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gingered Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chip or slice the pears and ginger root.

Cook the pears

  1. Boil the pears and ginger with sugar for 1 hour.

Add the lemons

  1. Boil the whole lemons in water until tender.

  2. Cut the lemons into small pieces, removing the seeds.

  3. Add the lemon pieces to the pears and boil for 1 hour longer.

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.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, spoonable texture as they cook.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dish and, as water evaporates, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, and their peel and pith contribute natural pectin that helps the mixture set.
Candied ginger root
Adds a warm, spicy flavour and aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Keep the sugar syrup from scorching during the long boils. As water evaporates, the sugar concentrates and can burn on the bottom of the pan, giving a bitter taste. Stirring often and keeping the heat controlled lets the fruit soften fully and the syrup thicken evenly.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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