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Canned Pears

This recipe preserves pears in a sugar syrup with optional ginger and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Canned Pears

Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Canned Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Wash, cut in halves, core, and peel the pears.

  2. Plunge the pears into cold water to prevent discoloration.

  3. Place the pears in jars with the outside touching the sides.

Make the syrup and fill the jars

  1. Combine sugar, water, and optional flavorings in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the ginger and lemon rind, then pour the syrup over the pears until overflowing.

  3. Adjust sterilized rings and covers loosely on the jars.

Process and cool

  1. Place the jars in a kettle with the bottom covered with layers of paper.

  2. Fill the kettle with water to the neck of the jars and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for fifteen minutes with the kettle securely covered.

  4. Tighten the covers and let the jars cool in the kettle.

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.

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.

  1. Ginger + lemontop 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. Sugar + gingertop 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).

Sugar and ginger 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
Provide the fruit itself, which softens and turns tender during the boiling process.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's texture and flavor in the jar.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that surrounds and covers the pears.

The step that matters

Plunge the pears into cold water. Cut pear flesh browns quickly when exposed to air because of enzymatic oxidation. Cold water slows this browning, so the pears stay pale until they are jarred.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, lemon. 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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