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Pears

Pears boiled in a sugar syrup until tender, then packed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Pears

Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare the pears and cut them in halves.

  2. Soak the pears in cold water to prevent discoloration.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 2 cups of sugar and 1 quart of water in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Poach and pack

  1. Remove the pears from the cold water and drop them into the boiling syrup.

  2. Cook until the pears can be pierced easily with a silver fork.

  3. Fill jars with the cooked pears and syrup.

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.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit that softens in syrup and becomes tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Cook until the pears can be pierced easily. Pears cook at different rates depending on size and ripeness. Testing with a fork, rather than relying on time alone, shows when the flesh has softened through without turning mushy.

“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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