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Dessert

Stewed or Baked Pears

Pears stewed or baked with liquid and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and wine work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 223 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Stewed or Baked Pears

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

  1. Peel and core the pears.

  2. Place them in a covered jar.

Add liquid and bake

  1. Add the liquid and sugar to the jar.

  2. Seal the jar tightly.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for several hours until tender.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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 into tender, sweet flesh as it cooks slowly.
Water or wine
Provides moisture so the pears stew gently rather than drying out.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the cooking liquid around the pears.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly. A tight seal traps steam so the pears cook in their own moisture and the added liquid, keeping them tender and preventing the liquid from evaporating during the long bake.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, 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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