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
Prepare
Peel and quarter the pears.
For every pound of pears, use ½ pound of sugar.
Make the syrup and cook
In a pot, combine 2 pints of water with 2 pounds of sugar to make a syrup.
Cook the pears in the syrup for 2 to 3 hours, until they are 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 itself, whose flesh softens and turns golden as it cooks in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms a syrup that helps preserve it.
The step that matters
Cook the pears in the syrup until golden brown. Long cooking softens the fruit and lets its sugars caramelise, so the color and texture change gradually. Judge doneness by color and tenderness rather than by time alone, since overcooking leads to mushy pears.
“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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