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 ↓
Baked Pears
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Wipe the pears and leave the stems intact.
Place the pears in an earthen baking dish.
Bake
Pour boiling water around the pears and sprinkle with sugar.
Cover the pears with another dish.
Bake until tender, basting three or four times with the liquid.
Let the pears cool in the baking dish.
Serve
Transfer the pears to a glass dish.
Pour the liquid over them.
Serve with sugar and cream.
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.
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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
- Large sweet pears
- Provide the fruit that softens and turns tender during slow baking.
- Boiling water
- Creates steam and a moist environment so the pears cook gently without drying out.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps flavour the cooking liquid around the pears.
The step that matters
Bake until tender, basting three or four times with the liquid. Low, steady heat under a cover softens the pears through steam. Basting returns the liquid over the fruit so the surface stays moist and the flesh cooks evenly rather than drying or unevenly softening.
“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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