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Preserve

Ginger Pears

A preserve of pears cooked with ginger, lemon, and orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and chop the ginger.

Cook

  1. Cook the ginger in 1 pint of water with the orange and lemon peels until tender.

  2. Add the sugar, orange juice, and lemon juice, and cook until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Chop the pears coarsely and add them to the pot.

  4. Cook very slowly for two hours.

Jar

  1. Place the mixture in small jars and cover when cold.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Ginger + peartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

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

  5. Orange + peartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green ginger
Provides the sharp, spicy aroma that defines the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens and, as it cooks down, thickens the preserve and helps it keep.
Pears
Form the bulk of the preserve and soften into its body during slow cooking.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness and contribute peel for aroma and pectin.
Oranges
Add sweet-tart citrus flavour and peel for aroma and pectin.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly for two hours. Sugar can scorch on the bottom of the pot at high heat, and slow cooking lets the pears soften and the mixture thicken evenly without burning.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, lemon, orange. 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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