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Dessert

Pear Marmalade

A preserve made by boiling pears, sugar, water, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pear Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pears

  1. Boil the pears until they are soft and pulpy.

  2. Weigh the cooked pears and measure out half their weight in sugar.

Make the marmalade

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar with a little water and boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Once the sugar mixture reaches a crack stage, add the pear pulp and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in 4 drops of essence of cloves and let it cool before using.

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 + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 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 + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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
Supply the fruit pulp that forms the body of the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the pulp and, as it thickens, helps it set into a spreadable texture.
Essence of cloves
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the marmalade.

The step that matters

Taking the sugar syrup to the crack stage. Sugar syrup that is boiled far enough has less water and more concentrated sugar, which helps the pear pulp set. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff. Skimming foam keeps the syrup clear.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar. 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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