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Dessert

Pears, Peaches and Apples

A preserve made by stewing pears, peaches, and apples in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Pears, Peaches and Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the peaches, pears, and apples in half.

  2. Combine 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of water in a pot to make a syrup.

Pack and steam

  1. Fill jars with the fruit and pour the warm syrup over them.

  2. Steam the jars for 15 minutes.

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 + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Peach + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches, pears, and apples
Supply the fruit flavour and the texture that holds the preserve together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, in the syrup, helps preserve the fruit and keep its texture.

The step that matters

Steam the jars for 15 minutes. Heating the sealed jars destroys microorganisms and drives out air, which lets the lids seal and the preserve keep. Too short a steam can leave spoilage organisms alive, while the fruit can turn soft if overheated.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, apple, sugar. 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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