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Dessert

Pear Jelly

Pear Jelly is a preserved fruit made by stewing pears with sugar, cloves, and wine, then setting them in a gelatinous liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel and quarter the pears.

  2. Place pears in a shallow dish with sugar, cloves, and enough water to cover them.

  3. Stew until tender but not broken.

Make the jelly

  1. Remove pears from the liquid and place them in a mold.

  2. To ½ pint of the liquid, add gelatin, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and wine.

  3. Boil the mixture quickly for 5 minutes, then strain the warm liquid over the pears.

  4. Set the mold in a cool place to set.

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. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pear + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the fruit body of the jelly, softened by stewing so they hold their shape in the mold.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the poaching liquid and adds body to the final jelly.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Wine
Adds flavour and aroma to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture quickly for 5 minutes. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in the hot liquid before straining, or it will not set evenly. Boiling briefly and then straining the warm liquid over the pears keeps the jelly clear and evenly firm.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, wine, lemon, gelatin. 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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