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Dessert

Baked Pears

A baked pear dessert with sugar and quince or apple jelly syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Baked Pears

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 ↓

Baked Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut pears in half and remove cores. Do not peel.

  2. Place pears in a broad baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the pears.

Bake

  1. Dissolve jelly in hot water and pour over the pears without disturbing the sugar.

  2. Bake until the fruit is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, pouring syrup over the pears.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

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

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 fruit flavour, softening into tender flesh when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the liquid to form the syrup.
Jelly
Its pectin thickens the syrup and adds quince or apple flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until the fruit is tender.. Heat softens the pears as their cell walls break down. Underbaked pears stay firm and grainy, so check for tenderness rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Quincethe original

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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