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 ↓
Preserved Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Peel and quarter the pears.
In a pot, combine 1 pint of water and 1 pound of sugar to make a syrup.
Add the pears to the syrup and cook for 2 to 3 hours until they turn golden brown.
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.
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 flesh that softens and becomes tender as it cooks in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and, as it heats for hours, helps the pears brown.
The step that matters
Cooking the pears until golden brown. Sugar darkens as it heats, so prolonged cooking can move from golden to over-browned or bitter. Check the colour regularly over the 2 to 3 hours rather than relying only on the timer.
“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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