Name: To Stew Pears
Ingredients: Pears; Butter; White sugar

Why it works: Pear and butter work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 583 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

To Stew Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Pears
Butter
White sugar

Directions

Remove the stalks from the pears.
Place them in a saucepan with boiling butter.
Shake the pears over a brisk fire until they are nicely browned.
Drain the pears and arrange them with their stalks upwards on a thick layer of white sugar in a dish.
Serve warm or 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Pear + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together583 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).