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 ↓
Preserved Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Wipe and peel the pears.
You can either cook them whole with stems left on or remove the stems, cut them into quarters, and core them.
Prepare a syrup by combining water and sugar, following standard preserving methods.
Optionally, add a small piece of ginger root or a few slices of lemon rind to the syrup while cooking.
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.
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Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,154 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together14,054 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Bartlett pear + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together83 recipes
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Bartlett pear + gingertop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together22 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
Swap the ginger
The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bartlett pear, sugar, lemon):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Gingerthe original
- Nutmegfits less well
- Peppermintfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against bartlett pear, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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