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Dessert

Pear Marmalade or Ginger Pears

A preserved fruit spread made from pears, sugar, candied ginger, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Pear Marmalade or Ginger Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chip the pears.

  2. Cut the candied ginger into pieces.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Combine the pears, sugar, and ginger in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Place the lemons in cold water and boil until tender.

  4. Chop the lemons and remove the seeds.

  5. Add the chopped lemons to the pear mixture.

  6. Boil the combined mixture for another hour.

Store

  1. Store the resulting preserve like jelly.

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

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

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
Form the bulk and body of the preserve as they break down while cooking.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps thicken and preserve the mixture.
Candied ginger
Adds sweet, warm aroma and a spicy flavor that stands out against the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boiling the combined mixture for the second hour. Sugar-heavy fruit mixtures can scorch on the bottom of the pot as water evaporates and the sugar concentrates. Keeping the boil controlled and stirring helps the marmalade thicken evenly.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, 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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