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 ↓
Baked Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Place the peeled pears in a brown crock.
Combine sugar, water, and mixed spice in a muslin bag and add to the crock.
Cook
Cover the crock with brown paper.
Cook slowly for 3 hours.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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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
- Pears
- Form the main body of the dish, softening gradually into tender fruit during slow cooking.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps form a syrup that flavours and coats the pears.
- Mixed spice
- Provides warm aromatic flavour that infuses the pears and syrup during cooking.
The step that matters
Cook slowly for 3 hours. Gentle, long, low-intensity heat lets the pears soften evenly and absorb the syrup without breaking down or scorching. Rushing with higher heat can leave the fruit unevenly cooked and the syrup too harsh.
“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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