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Dessert

Pear Jelly

A preserved fruit dessert made by stewing pears with sugar, cloves, lemon, and wine, then setting in gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the pears and cut them into quarters.

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

  3. Stew the pears until tender but not broken.

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

Make the jelly

  1. In a separate pot, combine the remaining liquid, gelatin, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and wine.

  2. Boil the mixture quickly for five minutes.

  3. Strain the warm liquid over the pears and set in a cool place.

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

Gelatin
Sets the strained liquid into a firm jelly around the pears.
Sugar
Sweetens the pears and the liquid they are stewed in.
Baking pears
Provide the fruit that is stewed until tender and set in the jelly.
Wine
Adds flavor and acidity to the jelly liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.

The step that matters

Stew the pears until tender but not broken. Pears that overcook fall apart and cloud the jelly, while underdone pears stay hard. Gentle simmering keeps the pieces whole and tender enough to eat.

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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