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Dessert

Pear Butter

A sweet preserve made from pears, sour apples, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bartlett pear and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 31 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pear Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the skins and cores from the pears.

  2. Place the pears in a pot and add enough water to nearly cover them.

  3. Add the sour apples to the pot.

Cook and jar

  1. Pour in the juice from the boiled pears and cores.

  2. Add sugar to taste and boil until smooth, stirring constantly.

  3. Once done, place in air-tight 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. Bartlett pear + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Bartlett pear + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Make up most of the bulk and give the butter its body and mellow pear flavor.
Sour apples
Add natural pectin and tartness that help the butter set and balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter and helps it thicken and deepen in color as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while boiling. As the fruit cooks down and thickens, its sugars and solids settle and scorch easily on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly, prevents burnt flavors, and gives a smooth texture.

Swap the bartlett pear

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Bartlett pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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