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Baked Pears

Baked pears are cooked with molasses or sugar, optionally with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Baked Pears

Why it works: Pear and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 942 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place pears in a jar without peeling them. Add ½ cup of molasses or sugar, depending on preference. Add a little water if necessary.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 5‑6 hours in a brick oven or 2 hours in a range or stove.

  2. For a more delicate flavor, peel the pears and use sugar instead of molasses. Add the juice of 1‑2 lemons for extra flavor, if desired.

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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pear + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + lemontop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the body of the dish, softening into tender, spoonable flesh during the long bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color and a rich, caramel-like flavor as it cooks down with the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the molasses or sugar.

The step that matters

Adding water and watching the long bake. Baking for hours in low heat can dry the pears and scorch the sugars. A little added water keeps the fruit moist so it softens evenly instead of sticking and darkening too far.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, molasses. 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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