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Preserve

New Method of Preserving Fruit

A preserved fruit product made by reducing pears and apples to paste, pressing into cakes, soaking in boiling water, and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

New Method of Preserving Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cakes

  1. Reduce pears and apples to a paste by jamming.

  2. Press the paste into cakes and gently dry them.

Rehydrate and sweeten

  1. When ready to use, pour four times their weight of boiling water over the cakes.

  2. Allow to soak for 20 minutes.

  3. Add sugar to taste.

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 + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Provide the main fruit flavour and body for the paste that is pressed into cakes.
Apples
Add fruit flavour and body, helping the paste hold together when pressed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the fruit flavour, and is added to taste.
Boiling water
Rehydrates the dried cakes, restoring moisture and softness.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applethe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar. 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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