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Dessert

Baked Pears, Quinces and Bananas

A baked fruit dish of pears, quinces, and bananas served with whipped cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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, Quinces and Bananas

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Bake the pears

  1. Pare the pears, then core them.

  2. Fill the cavities with sugar.

  3. Place the pears in a pan with a little water.

  4. Bake the pears at 350°F (175°C) for about four hours.

  5. Serve the baked pears cold with whipped cream.

Bake the quinces

  1. Bake the quinces the same way but for a shorter time.

  2. Serve the quinces hot with butter and sugar.

Bake the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas, then halve them.

  2. Sprinkle the bananas with sugar.

  3. Place the bananas in a shallow pan with a little water.

  4. Bake the bananas at 400°F (200°C) for about twenty minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pear + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Quince + bananatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pears
Soften during long baking and turn tender and sweet with the added sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it caramelise lightly at the surface as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the hot quinces as they are served.
Whipped cream
Adds cool, rich fat that contrasts with the warm, sweet baked pears.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, cream, butter, banana. 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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