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Dessert

Sweet Pear Pickle

A sweet preserve made from pears, sugar, ginger, 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 ↓

Sweet Pear Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the whole lemons in clear water until soft.

  2. Peel the pears and chop them finely.

Cook

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the sugar, chopped pears, and the water from the boiled lemons.

  2. Cook the mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Add the finely chopped ginger and the chopped lemons, removing the seeds.

  4. Cook for another hour or until the mixture thickens to the consistency of marmalade.

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. Sugar + gingertop 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).

Sugar and ginger 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
Provide the bulk and fruity body of the pickle as they break down during cooking.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, as it concentrates, helps it thicken and preserve.
Candied ginger
Adds sweet, spicy aroma and a chewy bite throughout the pickle.
Lemons
Add acidity and pectin-rich pulp that help the mixture set.

The step that matters

Cooking until it thickens to marmalade consistency. Sugar and fruit pectin only set into a thick, spreadable texture once enough water has evaporated and the sugar concentration is high. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and make the pickle hard or bitter.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, 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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