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Dessert

Potato Pears

Potato Pears are small, baked potato shapes studded with cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Potato Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pears

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes until smooth.

  2. Season the mashed potatoes with salt and pepper.

  3. While warm, mold the potatoes into the shape of small pears.

Finish and bake

  1. Dip each pear in the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Insert a clove into the small end of each pear to represent the stem.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Potatoes
Form the main body of the pear, becoming soft and smooth when mashed and moldable while warm.
Egg yolk
Brushed on as a coating that browns in the oven, giving the pears a golden surface.

The step that matters

Baking until golden brown. Egg yolk browns through Maillard reactions and caramelization at oven heat. Pulling the pears too early leaves them pale, while leaving them too long can dry the potato surface.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, clove, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, clove, pepper. 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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