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Dessert

Pear Chips

Pear Chips are thinly sliced pears cooked in a sugar and ginger syrup, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 Chips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears and cut them into very thin slices.

  2. Pound the ginger finely.

  3. Cut the lemons into small bits.

  4. Grate the rind of 2 lemons.

Cook the pears and syrup

  1. Boil the pears until they are clear.

  2. Remove the pears.

  3. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

  4. Put the pears back in the syrup. Heat thoroughly.

Can

  1. Can.

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 + lemontop 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
Provide the main body of the chips, becoming clear and tender when boiled in syrup.
Sugar
Forms the thickened syrup that sweetens the pears and helps preserve them.
Lemons
Add acidity and fragrance from the bits and rind, balancing the sweetness.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it thickens. Sugar concentration controls the set and preservation; syrup that is too thin may not thicken or keep the pears well, while overcooking can make it too stiff or sticky.

Swap the pear

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

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

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