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Dessert

Peae Jam

A sweet preserve made from pears, lemon juice, ginger, sugar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Peae Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears, leaving the stem.

  2. Place the pears in a pot with minimal water and stew for a short time.

  3. Remove the pears, leaving the juice in the pot.

Make the jam

  1. Add sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice to the juice in the pot.

  2. If desired, add any spices in a muslin bag.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the pears back to the pot, inserting a clove or two into each pear.

  5. Boil until the pears are tender.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the bulk of the jam and provide its soft, fruity texture as they cook down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the jam and give it body as it thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports gel setting.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic citrus oils that add fragrance to the jam.
Root ginger
Adds a warm, sharp aroma and gentle spiciness to the jam.

The step that matters

Stew the pears briefly in minimal water. Pears soften quickly with heat, so a short stew with little water tenderises them while keeping their juice in the pot for flavour. Overcooking at this stage makes the fruit mushy before the sugar is added.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, ginger, sugar, clove. 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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