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Dessert

Pear Jam

A jam made from ripe pears, sugar, and water, cooked until soft and thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and sugar 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 ↓

Pear Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare, core and quarter the pears.

  2. Place the pears in a jar and cover the jar tightly.

  3. Put the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and keep the water boiling until the pears are soft.

  4. Transfer the pears to a preserving pan.

Make the jam

  1. Mix the pears with the syrup made from the sugar and water.

  2. Stir the mixture over the fire for 20 minutes.

Jar and store

  1. Pour the jam into jars.

  2. Cover the jars.

  3. Store in a cool, dry place.

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. Pear + sugartop 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

Pears
Provide the fruit body and natural pectin that help the jam thicken as it cooks.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, helps preserve the jam, and thickens it as water evaporates.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over the fire for 20 minutes. Sugar and fruit can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left still. Constant stirring over heat spreads the heat evenly and keeps the jam from burning while it thickens.

“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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