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Pear Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling pears with water and sugar until the syrup thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and sugar 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 ↓

Pear Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pears

  1. Boil the pears in water until tender, using the water for the syrup.

  2. Use ¾ pound (1 cup) of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Boil gently until the syrup has penetrated the pears and they look clear.

  4. Remove any pieces that cook sooner.

Pack and finish

  1. Transfer the pears to jars.

  2. Boil the syrup until thick and pour it over the pears.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Provide the fruit that softens during cooking and holds its shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit, thickens the syrup, and helps preserve the pears.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the syrup has penetrated the pears. Gentle heat lets sugar syrup slowly move into the fruit and replace its water. Boiling hard can break the pears apart and cook the outside before the inside has absorbed the syrup.

“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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