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 Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pare, halve, and core the pears.
Stew
Place the pears in a covered saucepan with lemon rind, sugar, and enough water to nearly cover them.
If desired, add the bruised cochineal for color.
Optionally, add wine for flavor.
Stew the pears gently for 4 to 5 hours, or until perfectly tender.
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.
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Pear + winetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together223 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
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Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together942 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,157 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon and sugar 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
What each ingredient does
- Pears
- Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender fruit during the long gentle stew.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps the pears keep their shape as they cook.
- Lemon rind
- Adds bright aromatic citrus flavor to the syrup as it stews.
The step that matters
Stew the pears gently. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer softens the pears evenly without breaking them apart. A hard boil can make the fruit ragged and cloudy the syrup.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, wine):
- Applefits better
- Plumfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, wine. 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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