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Dessert

Stewed Pears

Stewed pears simmered in a ginger or lemon syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and ginger work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 452 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears, leaving the stems intact.

  2. Place the pears in a preserving kettle with a little cold water.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the pears slowly until tender.

  2. Remove the pears to a dish.

  3. Make a syrup with the cooking water, adding preserved ginger or lemon slices.

  4. Pour the syrup over the pears and let cool.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Firm, juicy fruit that becomes tender and sweet-flavoured as it cooks slowly in water.
Preserved ginger or lemon slices
Adds aroma and a bright, sharp flavour to the cooking syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the pears slowly until tender. Gentle heat softens the fruit evenly through the core without breaking it apart. Fast boiling tends to split the pears and make the syrup cloudy.

“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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