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Dessert

Pear Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking pears with sugar, water, ginger, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pear Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve sugar in water gradually to prevent hardening.

  2. Once dissolved, add peeled and quartered pears.

  3. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours until pears are tender.

  4. Lift pears from syrup with a perforated spoon and cool on platters.

  5. Slice lemons thinly, discarding seeds, and add to syrup.

  6. Cook syrup until thick, then return pears to reheat.

Jar and seal

  1. Place pears in jars, cover with syrup, and seal.

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 fruit bulk and tender texture that the syrup surrounds and preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at high concentration, helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and supports the set of the syrup.
Root ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Dissolve sugar in water gradually. Adding sugar slowly lets it dissolve fully before the syrup boils. Undissolved crystals can recrystallise and harden the preserve, leaving grainy or sticky results.

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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