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Dessert

Pear Marmalade

A sweet preserve made by boiling pears with sugar, water, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pear Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare and core the pears, then boil them until they become a pulp.

Make the marmalade

  1. Measure half the weight of the pears in sugar and place it in a kettle with a little water.

  2. Boil the sugar mixture until it reaches a taffy-like consistency, skimming off any foam while boiling.

  3. Add the pear pulp and 4 drops of essence of cloves, then boil for a minute or two.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 and fruity flavour, breaking down into a pulp that thickens the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, when boiled, helps it set to a firm, thick texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to a taffy-like consistency. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration before the pulp is added. Too little boiling leaves it thin, while overboiling makes it hard and can scorch, so the syrup is watched closely and foam is skimmed off.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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