Why it works: Sugar and pear are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Stewed Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the water and sugar together for 10 minutes.
Add cochineal to color the syrup a deep red.
Stew the pears
Peel and core the pears, then cut them in half.
Drop the pear halves into the syrup and stew gently until soft.
Allow to cool before serving.
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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Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lump sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps it thicken as it boils down.
- Pears
- Become tender and sweet as they stew in the syrup.
The step that matters
Stew gently until soft. Gentle heat lets the pears soften evenly and keep their shape. Boiling hard can break the fruit apart and make the syrup cloudy.
“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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