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Dessert

Brandy Pears

Pears simmered, peeled, and preserved in a sugar‑water syrup with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and brandy work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 157 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Brandy Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Simmer pears in a little water until they yield to pressure.

  2. Remove pears and place them in cold water.

  3. Peel the pears and make a syrup with 3 pounds of sugar and 3 cups of water.

Make the syrup

  1. When the syrup is clear, add the pears while hot.

  2. Boil until the pears look clear and the syrup is rich.

  3. Transfer pears to a glass jar.

  4. Boil the syrup until thick, then mix in ½ cup of brandy.

Finish and store

  1. Pour the syrup over the pears and cover with a paper when cool.

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. Pear + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Soften under simmering and turn tender and clear in the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that sweetens the pears and preserves them.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the syrup.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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