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Dessert

Pear Preserves

A method of preserving pears by boiling them in a sugar syrup until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare and cut the pears in half, removing the cores.

  2. For each pound of pears, use an equal amount of sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. Clarify the sugar or make a syrup without clarifying.

  2. Skim the syrup.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pears and boil until they are clear.

  2. Skim out the pears.

  3. Add more fruit.

  4. Continue until all are cooked.

  5. If the syrup is not thick enough, boil it down.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour it hot over the pears in jars.

  2. Seal the jars.

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 that becomes the preserve's main body and texture when cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves into a syrup, helps preserve it and build body.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down if it is not thick enough. Sugar concentration determines how thick the syrup gets and how well the preserve keeps. A syrup that is too thin may spoil or fail to set, so it should be reduced before the hot syrup is poured into jars.

“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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