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Dessert

Pears, Preserved in Syrup

Pears preserved in a sugar syrup after boiling and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pears, Preserved in Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. Place the pears in a pan and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer until slightly soft.

  3. Remove the pears and place them in cold water.

  4. Carefully peel the pears, leaving a bit of the stem and blossom end.

  5. Pierce each pear at the blossom end, reaching the core.

Make the syrup and simmer

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water; boil for 10 minutes and skim off any scum.

  2. Add the pears to the syrup and simmer gently.

  3. For best results, simmer for 5 minutes over 3 days, keeping the pears in the syrup.

Jar and seal

  1. Once done, drain the pears and place them in jars.

  2. Reduce the syrup by boiling for 10 minutes, then pour over the pears.

  3. Allow to cool and cover tightly.

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 + 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 fruit that softens and absorbs the sweet syrup during preserving.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by reducing available water.

The step that matters

Simmering the pears in the syrup. Pears must be kept gently simmering, not boiling hard, so they soften evenly without breaking apart. Keeping them submerged in syrup over the repeated sessions lets sugar penetrate the flesh slowly, which firms and preserves the fruit.

“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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