Skip to main content
Dessert

Barberries Preserved with Pears

Barberries and pears are preserved in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and pear 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 ↓

Barberries Preserved with Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Weigh the barberries.

  2. Make a syrup with equal weight of sugar and ½ pint of water per pound of sugar.

  3. When the syrup is clear, add the barberries.

  4. Boil for 50 minutes.

Add the pears and finish

  1. Add pared and quartered pears equal to the amount of barberries.

  2. Boil until tender.

  3. Remove the fruit.

  4. Boil the syrup for 30 minutes.

  5. Pour the boiling syrup over the fruit.

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. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Barberries
Provide the tart fruit that gives the preserve its main flavour and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens the syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Pears
Add body and mild sweetness, balancing the tartness of the barberries.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup for 30 minutes. Sugar must reach a high enough concentration to thicken the syrup and keep the preserve from spoiling. Boiling long enough drives off water so the syrup sets properly.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes