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Dessert

Stewed Pears

Stewed pears cooked with butter, sugar, sweet cream, and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Pears

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steam the pears until soft.

  2. Dress the pears with ½ cup of butter.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and ¼ cup of sweet cream.

  4. Thicken the mixture with 1 teaspoon of corn starch.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  4. Pear + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

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

  5. Pear + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main body and soft texture of the stewed dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour across the pears.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild tartness of the fruit.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the body of the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a glossy sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with corn starch. Corn starch thickens only when heated in liquid and needs to be mixed in evenly first. Added unevenly, it forms lumps and leaves the sauce thin or grainy in places.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, corn. 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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