Name: Canning Fruits
Ingredients: Peaches; Pears; Syrup (made from sugar and water); Cheesecloth

Why it works: Peach and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 114 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Canning Fruits

Ingredients

Peaches
Pears
Syrup (made from sugar and water)
Cheesecloth

Directions

Prepare glass jars by wrapping them in a towel soaked in warm water or placing them in a pan of warm water.
Make syrup in a clean pot by dissolving sugar in water.
Cook peaches and pears until they can be pierced with a fork.
Use a wire spoon to lift the fruit and place it compactly in the jars, with the cut sides facing outward.
Fill the jars with hot syrup, using a cheesecloth strainer to catch any loose fruit particles.
Seal the jars and process them according to canning guidelines.

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.

Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together114 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together254 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).