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Dessert

Phar Jam

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Phar Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears, leaving the stem.

  2. In a pot, add the pears with a little water and stew them for a short time.

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

Make the syrup

  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 for 10 minutes.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pears back to the pot, sticking a clove or two in each pear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main body of the jam and carry the fruit flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jam thicken as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant citrus aroma and a slightly bitter edge.
Root ginger
Adds warm, pungent spice to the jam.

The step that matters

Boil until the pears are tender. The pears need to soften fully so they absorb the syrup and its flavour evenly. Undercooked pears stay firm and taste raw, while overboiled pears break down and turn mushy.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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