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Dessert

Pears, Border of

A dessert of stewing pears served with a sponge cake border and custard, topped with a reduced syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Pears, Border of

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel, halve, and core the pears.

  2. In a stewpan, combine loaf sugar, 4 cups water, and a few drops of carmine to make syrup.

  3. Add pears to the syrup and cook gently for about 30 minutes until tender.

  4. Remove pears and reduce the syrup by boiling rapidly.

  5. Reheat the pears in the reduced syrup before serving.

Make the sponge border

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add castor sugar, lemon rind, milk, and a few drops of cochineal.

  2. Slice the sponge cakes and arrange them in a well-buttered border mold.

  3. Pour the custard mixture over the sponge cakes.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 40 minutes in a tin with boiling water halfway up the mold.

Serve

  1. Once baked, turn out onto a hot dish, arrange the pears on the border, strain the syrup over them, and serve.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Set the custard so the sponge border holds together when turned out.
Sponge cakes
Form the soft base of the border that soaks up the custard.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture into a custard that bakes smooth and tender.
Small stewing pears
Provide the main fruit, which softens and takes on flavour as it cooks in syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens and thickens the syrup that the pears cook in.

The step that matters

Bake the custard in a water bath. Baking in a tin with boiling water halfway up the mold gives gentle, even heat, so the eggs set without curdling or becoming rubbery.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cinnamon, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cinnamon, milk. 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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