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Dessert

Pear Dessert

A dessert of pears simmered in syrup served over steamed rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 ↓

Pear Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan to make a syrup.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer until sugar dissolves.

  3. Add lemon juice and ginger to the syrup.

Cook and serve

  1. Place pear halves in the syrup and cook until tender.

  2. Remove pears and place a pecan nut in each half where the core was.

  3. Serve the pears over the steamed rice, drizzling with the syrup.

  4. Enjoy hot or cold.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit base, softening as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps form its body as it dissolves and thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and the pears.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the syrup.
Pecan nuts
Add crunch and a rich, buttery flavour in contrast to the soft pears.

The step that matters

Cooking the pears until tender. Pears must simmer gently in the syrup until a knife slides through the flesh. Too little time leaves them firm and starchy, while too hard a boil can break them apart and make the syrup cloudy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

“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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