Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Preserved Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the pears.
Combine equal parts pears and sugar; let stand overnight.
Make the syrup and cook
In the morning, drain the syrup and boil it.
Pour the syrup over the pears and let stand for another night.
Cook the pears until tender.
Remove the pears and boil the syrup until thick.
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.
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 fruit that softens and becomes tender during cooking.
- Sugar
- Draws water out of the fruit to form a syrup and adds sweetness that helps preserve the pears.
The step that matters
Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration determines how well the syrup preserves the fruit. Boiling it down to a thick consistency raises the sugar level, while under-boiling leaves the syrup too thin to keep the pears stable.
“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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