Name: Stewed Peabs
Ingredients: 2 quarts large honeyed pears, peeled, cored, and quartered; 2 cups sugar; 2 cups water

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 ↓

Stewed Peabs

Ingredients

2 quarts large honeyed pears, peeled, cored, and quartered
2 cups sugar
2 cups water

Directions

In a preserving kettle or saucepan, combine the pears, sugar, and water.
Cover tightly and stew gently for one hour.

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.

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 main fruit body and soften into tender, sweet pieces as they stew.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the fruit hold its flavour as it cooks.

“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.