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Pears, Jargonelle, Preserved

Pears preserved in a ginger and lemon syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Pears, Jargonelle, Preserved

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Gather firm pears and peel them thinly.

  2. Remove the seeds using a fruit knife or bodkin.

Soak in syrup

  1. In a preserving pan, cover the pears with a thin syrup made from ½ pound of sugar per pint of water.

  2. Simmer gently until tender enough to pierce with a needle, but do not let them break.

  3. Transfer the pears to a bowl and pour the syrup over them.

  4. Soak for two days.

Finish and dry

  1. Drain the syrup and add an equal weight of sugar, ½ ounce of whole ginger, and the juice and rind of a lemon for each quart of syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup for ten minutes and skim carefully.

  3. Add the pears back into the syrup and simmer gently until they look clear.

  4. Drain the pears and dry them in the sun or a gentle oven.

  5. Alternatively, keep them in the syrup.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

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

  4. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the body of the preserve, becoming tender and translucent as they cook in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, in thick syrup, preserves the fruit by drawing out water.
Whole ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the syrup and the pears.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrance that brighten the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer the pears gently until tender. Pears must be cooked only until a needle pierces them. Boiling hard or overcooking breaks the fruit apart, while undercooking leaves it firm and unable to absorb the syrup.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, syrup, 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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