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Dessert

Pear Jam

A jam made from pears, lemon juice, rind, ginger, sugar, and optional cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pear Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears, leaving the stem.

  2. Place the pears in a pot with as little water as possible and stew for a short time.

  3. Remove the pears, leaving the juice in the pot.

Make the jam

  1. Add sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice to the juice in the pot.

  2. If desired, add any spices in a muslin bag.

  3. Boil the mixture together for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the pears back to the pot, sticking a clove or two into each pear.

  5. Boil until the pears are tender.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main fruit body and pectin-bearing flesh that gives the jam its bulk and texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by binding water and preserving the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports setting.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils and a bright citrus flavour, plus some natural pectin.
Root ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma that complements the pears and lemon.

The step that matters

Boil the pears until tender. Cook the pears just until tender, since overcooking breaks down the fruit and dulls its flavour, while undercooking leaves it firm and the jam less cohesive.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, lemon, ginger, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, lemon, ginger, 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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