Why it works: Sugar and pear are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Canning Pears or Peaches
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Make a syrup by boiling 3 pounds of sugar in 1 pint of water.
Prepare and pack the fruit
Skin and peel the fruit.
Steam the fruit until a silver fork can easily pierce it.
Place the fruit in cans and pour the boiling syrup over them.
Cover the cans quickly.
Grapes variation
For grapes, pick them off the stem, place in cans, and warm in the oven before adding syrup.
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.
-
Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's flavor and texture in the cans.
- Pears or peaches
- The main fruit, which softens during steaming and is packed in syrup.
The step that matters
Steam the fruit until a silver fork can easily pierce it. Steaming softens the fruit so it holds its shape in the can. Underdone fruit stays firm and may not pack or cook through properly when processed.
“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
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.