Name: Pear Tart
Ingredients: Pears; Water; Sugar; Puff pastry; Preserved quinces

Why it works: Pear and quince match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pear Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Peel the pears and cut them into quarters, removing the cores.
If the pears are large and green, boil them in a little water until soft.
Simmer the pears in a rich syrup made from sugar and water.
Line a dish with puff pastry and place the pears with the syrup inside.
Cover and bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.
For the quinces, combine an equal weight of syrup with the fruit in a preserving pan.
Boil and skim the mixture, then add the quinces.
Once the syrup thickens, place the quinces in a tart dish lined with puff pastry.
Cover and bake at 400°F (200°C), then gently lift the top and add syrup before serving.

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 + quincetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together133 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,444 recipes

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