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Pears — Continued.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and brandy work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 157 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pears — Continued.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the pears whole, leaving the stalks on, and scrape off the outside.

  2. Prepare a lined pan with cold water, lemon juice, and a pinch of bruised alum; drop the pears in as you finish peeling them.

  3. Simmer the pears until half done, but do not boil them.

  4. Refresh the pears in two separate cold waters, then drain them on a sieve.

  5. Place the pears in wide-mouthed bottles without pressing them down.

  6. Fill the bottles with syrup boiled to 38 degrees, slightly acidulated with citric acid and alum.

  7. Cork and tie the bottles, then place them in a deep saucepan with water halfway up the bottles.

  8. Boil for fifteen minutes, using straw or hay between the bottles to prevent breaking.

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 + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, brandy, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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