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Dessert

Brandy Pears

A preserved pear dish made by boiling pears, then steeping them in a sugar syrup with white brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brandy Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears evenly and nicely.

  2. Boil the pears in water for 15 minutes.

  3. Lay the pears on a flat dish to cool.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup using sugar equal to half the weight of the pears.

  2. Boil the syrup.

  3. Add the pears to the syrup.

  4. Boil for another 15 minutes.

Jar and finish

  1. Let the pears cool, then place them in jars.

  2. Fill the jars halfway with syrup and top with white brandy.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pear + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the syrup and brandy flavour as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the pears.
White brandy
Adds aroma and a spirited flavour to the finished pears.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, brandy. 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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