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Dessert

Pear Chip

Pear Chip is a preserved pear dessert made with sugar, ginger, and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Pear Chip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the pears as for apple pie, then cut each piece in half and weigh them.

  2. Let the pears stand overnight with the sugar and ginger.

Cook

  1. In the morning, add the juice of the lemons, removing the seeds.

  2. Cook the mixture for three hours.

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bartlett pear + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes
  5. Bartlett pear + gingertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
Provide the bulk and fruity flavor of the chip, softening as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juices, helping form a thick syrup as it cooks.
Preserved canton ginger
Adds spicy, aromatic sweetness that flavors the pear mixture.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Standing overnight with the sugar. Sugar draws water out of the pears through osmosis, so the fruit releases juice and dissolves sugar into it. This creates the syrup the mixture cooks in, so the pears should be fully covered and left undisturbed for the full time.

Swap the bartlett pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Bartlett 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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