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Pear Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pear Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the apple peelings and cores with water and mace until flavorful.

  2. Strain the mixture and boil the syrup with sugar until thick.

  3. Pour the syrup into the pie crust and cover with the upper crust.

  4. Bake the pie until golden brown.

  5. Optionally, butter the pie when it comes out of the oven.

  6. In a saucepan, whisk together egg yolks, cream, nutmeg, and sugar.

  7. Heat gently while stirring until just boiling, then remove from heat.

  8. Cut the crust into small triangles and place them on top of the pie before serving.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Quince + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, mace, sugar, butter, egg, cream, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, mace, sugar, butter, egg, cream, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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