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To Preserve Pears in Syrup

A method for preserving pears by cooking them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Preserve Pears in Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears.

  2. Halve or quarter the pears.

  3. Core the pears.

  4. Clean the pears with a damp cloth.

Cook the pears

  1. Boil the cores and skins in cold water.

  2. Boil hard pears in water until tender, being careful not to overcook.

  3. Remove the pears.

Make the syrup

  1. Add sugar to the strained liquid from the skins and cores.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Return the syrup to the pan.

  5. Add the pears.

  6. Bring to a boil.

Bottle and finish

  1. Bottle the pears as directed.

  2. For soft pears, cook them directly in the syrup.

  3. Add boiling water to adjust syrup thickness.

  4. Reduce syrup by boiling further.

  5. Optionally, flavor the syrup with lemon juice, lemon rind, and ginger.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the preserve while holding their shape when cooked gently.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body, helping the pears stay moist and keep well.

The step that matters

Cook hard pears only until tender. Overcooking breaks down the pear's pectin and cell walls, so the fruit turns mushy and loses its shape in the syrup.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, ginger. 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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