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Dessert

Preserved Pears

Preserved pears are pears boiled, soaked in sugar syrup, dried in an oven, and stored for long-term preservation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Preserved Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears and cut the stalks short.

  2. Soak the pears in cold water.

  3. Boil the pears until soft to the touch, then remove with a skimmer and place in cold water.

Soak and dry

  1. Drain the pears and soak them in a mixture of 1 pound of sugar dissolved in 2 quarts of water for 2 hours.

  2. Place the pears on a wire rack with the stalks facing inward.

  3. Keep the pears in a warm oven overnight.

  4. Repeat the soaking process and keep the pears in the oven for a second night.

  5. Continue this process for a total of four times, ensuring they are completely dried in the oven on the last round.

Store

  1. Store the dried pears in a dry place for long-term preservation.

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

Sugar
Sweetens the pears and, in the syrup, helps preserve them by drawing out water.
Pears
Provide the fruit that softens on boiling and dries into the finished preserve.

The step that matters

Drying the pears completely on the last round. Sugar syrup soaks and warm-oven drying are repeated so sugar gradually replaces water in the fruit. If the pears are not fully dried on the final round, residual moisture can let them spoil in storage.

“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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