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Dessert

Gingered Pears

A preserved fruit dish of pears cooked with ginger, lemon, and sugar.

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 ↓

Gingered Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger and lemons

  1. Boil the ginger root in water for 6 to 8 hours, then shred it.

  2. Boil the whole lemons until they reduce to a pulp, then shred them.

Cook the pears

  1. In a large pot, combine the diced pears, shredded ginger, lemon pulp, and the water used for boiling the ginger and lemons.

  2. Add the sugar and mix everything together.

  3. Cook the mixture for 6 to 8 hours.

  4. Transfer the gingered pears into sealed jars for storage.

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. Ginger + sugartop 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).

Ginger and sugar 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 bulk and fruity body of the preserve as they soften during cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps thicken it while preserving the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the pears keep their character.
Ginger root
Contributes warm, spicy aroma and flavour to the pears.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture for 6 to 8 hours. Long, gentle cooking lets the pears break down and the sugar concentrate into a thick preserve. Stopping early leaves it watery and the fruit firm, so check the set before jarring.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, lemon, 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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