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Dessert

Pear Marmalade

A preserve made from pears, sugar, lemons, and crystallized ginger, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pear Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the whole lemons in water until the peel can be easily pierced with a straw.

  2. Chop the lemons finely, discarding the seeds.

  3. Peel the pears and slice them thinly.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Combine all ingredients in a preserving kettle and simmer gently for 2 hours, stirring almost constantly.

Jar

  1. Transfer the marmalade into small glasses or 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 the bulk of the marmalade and provide its soft, sweet body.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit, thickens the mixture as it cooks, and helps preserve it.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavor, and their peel and seeds contribute pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Crystallized ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and a gently chewy bite.

The step that matters

Simmering gently while stirring almost constantly. As water evaporates, the sugar concentrates and the mixture can scorch on the bottom of the kettle. Frequent stirring and gentle heat prevent burning and let the pectin and sugar thicken evenly into a set marmalade.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

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