Skip to main content
Dessert

Pear Jam

A fruit preserve made from pears, lemon juice and rind, sugar, ginger, and optional cloves, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 intact.

  2. In a pot, add the pears with just enough water to cover them 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 spices in a muslin bag.

  3. Boil the mixture for ten 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 bulk of the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set as it cooks down.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens flavor and supports gelling, plus aromatic oils from the rind.
Root ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavor to the jam.

The step that matters

Boil until the pears are tender. Pears need enough cooking in the sugar syrup to soften fully and absorb sweetness. Stopping early leaves firm, underdone fruit, while overcooking can break the pieces down and make the jam too dense.

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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes