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Pears Preserves with Ginger

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pears Preserves with Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Select large, good-flavored pears and pare them thin, leaving the stems on.

  2. Soak the pears in cold water until ready to cook or enough to fill a steamer.

  3. Steam the pears until tender, then place them on a platter to cool.

  4. Make a rich syrup and add a bag containing green ginger root.

  5. Boil the syrup until a strong ginger flavor is obtained.

  6. Fill jars with the pears and hot syrup, then seal them air-tight.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ginger and sugar 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 pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Pearthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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