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Dessert

Preserved Pears

A sweet preserve made by cooking pears with sugar, lemon, ginger, and water, then bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Preserved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine 6 pounds of pears, 4 pounds of sugar, 2 coffee cups of water, the juice of 2 lemons, the rind of 1 lemon, and a handful of whole ginger.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pears and boil until soft, about 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the pears and boil the syrup a little longer.

  3. Return the pears to the pot and bring to a boil again.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the mixture while hot and add a little cochineal for color.

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.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes the preserved body of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and draws water out of the fruit, helping it keep as a preserve.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps set the fruit's preserving syrup.
Whole ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the pears until soft. Pears need enough heat and time to soften fully, but overcooking can break them down into mush. Removing them before returning them to the syrup helps keep their shape while the syrup thickens.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coffee, lemon, ginger):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coffee, lemon, ginger. 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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