Skip to main content
Dessert

Pear, and Quince

A sweet jam made by stewing pears with water and brown sugar until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Pear, and Quince

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jam

  1. Combine pears and water in a pot and stew for about 1 hour until soft.

  2. Add brown sugar and stir constantly until it becomes a jam.

Jar and cool

  1. Transfer the jam into jars and let it cool completely before sealing.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit flavor and the bulk of the jam, breaking down into a soft base.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the jam and thickens it as it cooks down into a spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly after adding the sugar. Sugar sticks and scorches on the bottom of the pot when it is concentrated with fruit at high heat. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the jam from burning while it thickens.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes