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Dessert

Stewed Pears

A dish of pears stewed in sugar syrup, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the pears

  1. Place the pears in a saucepan with sugar and enough water to cover them.

  2. Stew gently until the pears are perfectly tender.

Make the syrup

  1. Remove the pears and boil the syrup quickly without a lid until it reduces by half.

  2. Add a few drops of vanilla essence to the syrup.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare the rice by boiling it, then arrange it flat in a glass dish.

  2. Place the pears on top of the rice and pour the syrup over everything.

  3. Serve cold.

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 + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pear + ricetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

French pears
Provide the main fruit and texture, softening as they stew in the syrup.
Rice
Forms a flat base under the pears, absorbing some of the syrup as the dish is served.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps make the syrup that the pears cook in.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup quickly without a lid. Boiling uncovered lets water evaporate, concentrating the sugar so the syrup thickens and reduces by half. A lid would trap steam and leave the syrup thin.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, vanilla. 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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