Why it works: Pear and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 942 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓
To Preserve Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pears
Pare the pears smoothly and thin, leaving the stems and cutting out the black top at the blossom end.
Soak the pears in cold water.
Make a thin syrup with 1 quart of water and 1 pound of sugar.
Simmer the pears in the syrup for about 30 minutes.
Transfer the pears to a bowl and let them sit in the syrup for 2 days, ensuring they are fully covered.
Make the syrup
After 2 days, drain the syrup and add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of syrup.
Stir in a little beaten egg white, and add thinly pared lemon peel.
Boil the syrup for 10 minutes, skimming it well.
Add lemon juice to taste, then return the pears to the syrup.
Simmer the pears in the syrup until they are transparent.
Finish and jar
Remove and let them cool, inserting a clove in the blossom end of each pear.
Pour the warm syrup over the pears in glass jars.
If desired, add a little powdered cochineal to the syrup for color.
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 + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together942 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Hold their shape and turn tender and transparent as they cook slowly in the sugar syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by drawing out water.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
- Beaten egg white
- Binds to impurities during boiling so they rise and can be skimmed off, clarifying the syrup.
The step that matters
Simmering until transparent. Cooking the pears gently over time lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit. Boiling hard can break the pears apart, and stopping too early leaves them opaque and less preserved.
Swap the pear
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon):
- Orangefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Limefits better
- Pearthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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