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Dessert

Preserved Pears

Preserved Pears are pears sweetened and cooked in syrup with isinglass, then jarred with brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Preserved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears, cut large ones into quarters, and remove the cores.

  2. Weigh the fruit and use an equal weight of sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in just enough water to wet it.

  2. Add ¼ ounce of isinglass dissolved in warm water to the sugar mixture.

  3. Once the sugar is dissolved, make the syrup as directed for preserved peaches.

Cook and pack

  1. Cook the pears in the syrup until they look clear when held to the light, about 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the fruit and place it on broad dishes.

  3. Strain the syrup, then when lukewarm, pour it over the fruit in jars.

  4. Cover the jars with brandy paper and seal tightly.

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

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

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 is cooked and preserved, becoming tender and translucent in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by drawing out water.
Isinglass
A gelatin-like protein that helps clarify the syrup and gives it a light set.

The step that matters

Cooking the pears until clear. Fruit must cook long enough for syrup to penetrate and the flesh to turn translucent, which signals sugar uptake. Undercooked pears may spoil, while overcooking makes them break apart.

“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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