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Dessert

Pear Conserve

A sweet preserve made from pears, figs, and sugar, optionally with walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and fig share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pear Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pass the pears and figs through a meat grinder.

Cook

  1. Combine the ground mixture with sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. If desired, add chopped English walnuts shortly before removing from heat.

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 + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pear + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 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 bulk of the preserve and its fruity base flavor.
Figs
Add body and a distinctive sweet, earthy flavor to the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, with long boiling, thickens it into a spreadable set.

The step that matters

Boiling with occasional stirring. The mixture is boiled for about 2 hours; stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot as the sugar concentrates and the fruit breaks down and thickens.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, fig, sugar):

  1. Hazelnutfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, fig, 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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