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Dessert

Pear Patties

Pear patties are puff pastry parcels filled with custard, lemon cheese, and candied pears.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and pear work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 96 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Pear Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Use a pear-shaped cutter to stamp out pieces about 3 inches long.

  3. With a plain round cutter, cut halfway through the pastry at the wide end of each piece.

  4. Place on a greased baking sheet and brush with beaten egg.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven, take out the cut centers, and fill with a mixture of custard and lemon cheese.

  3. Top each with a candied pear, arranging them with the wide ends towards the center.

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. Cheese + peartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Lemon + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Puff pastry
Its layers puff and separate in the hot oven, forming the light, flaky base.
Beaten egg
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy finish on the pastry.
Thick custard
Fills the cavity with a creamy, moist layer that contrasts with the crisp pastry.
Lemon cheese
Adds tangy, acidic flavour that balances the sweetness of the custard and pears.
Candied pears
Provide sweetness and fruit flavour as the topping.

The step that matters

Cutting halfway through the pastry. The cut must go only partway through so the rim can rise and form a hollow for the filling. A cut all the way through lets the pastry spread and the filling run out, while a shallow cut keeps the centre from lifting cleanly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, pear, egg. 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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