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Gripped Gingered Pear

A preserved pear dish boiled with sugar, candied ginger, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gripped Gingered Pear

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chip the pears very finely.

  2. Slice the ginger root.

  3. Boil the whole lemons in water until tender, then cut them into small bits and remove the seeds.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine pears, ginger, and sugar; boil slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Add the lemon bits to the pear mixture and boil for 1 hour longer.

  3. Pour into tumblers or large top cans.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Pears
Form the bulk of the preserve and, as they cook down, give it body and a soft, spreadable texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, with long boiling, thickens it and helps it keep.
Candied ginger-root
Adds sweet, warm aroma and spicy flavour that runs through the preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 1 hour with the pears, ginger and sugar. Sugar and fruit must simmer long enough for the sugar to concentrate and the pectin in the fruit to set the mixture. Too little time leaves it runny, while a hard, fast boil can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, lemon. 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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