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Dessert

Preserved Pears

Preserved pears are pears cooked in a sugar syrup and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Preserved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Cut the pears in half lengthwise, leaving the stems on one half, and remove the cores.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup by combining the sugar, water, and lemon juice.

  2. Skim the syrup, add the pears, and cook until tender.

Pack and seal

  1. Remove the pears and pack them in sterilized jars.

  2. Fill the jars to overflowing with the syrup and seal.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bartlett pear + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes
  3. Bartlett pear + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the syrup's sweetness and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's texture and shape.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the syrup and helps keep the pears' color.

The step that matters

Fill the jars to overflowing with the syrup and seal. Trapped air and a low syrup level can let fruit discolor and spoil; filling to overflowing keeps the pears submerged and reduces headspace air, which helps the seal and preserves quality.

Swap the bartlett pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bartlett pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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