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Dessert

Pear Pie

A baked pie filled with apple peelings and cores boiled into a sweet syrup, topped with a cream and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the apple peelings and cores in water with a blade of mace until flavorful.

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

Assemble and bake

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

  2. If desired, add quince or marmalade before sealing the pie.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

Make the topping and serve

  1. For the topping, beat the egg yolks with cream, nutmeg, and sugar over low heat until just boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and pour the cream over the pie.

  3. Cut the crust into three small pieces and place them on 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream topping as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, custard-like topping texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down.
Apple peelings and cores
Provide pectin and flavor for the syrup base.

The step that matters

Beating the egg yolks with cream over low heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if overheated. Keeping the heat low and stopping once the mixture just reaches boiling helps it stay smooth and custard-like.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, mace, sugar, egg, cream, nutmeg. 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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