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To Preserve Red Pears

A method for preserving pears in a sweet syrup of sugar, port wine, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Preserve Red Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Parboil the pears in water and peel them.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine the sugar, port wine, lemon juice and rind, cochineal, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil the pears in this mixture until they become clear and red.

  3. Remove the pears and boil the syrup until thick.

  4. Strain the syrup 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pear + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Hold their shape as the main fruit while cooking in the syrup.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens the syrup as it reduces.
Port wine
Adds flavor and acidity to the syrup, helping it take on color.

The step that matters

Boil the pears until clear and red. Boiling too hard can break the pears apart, while stopping too early leaves them opaque and pale. Gentle simmering lets the syrup soak in evenly and the color penetrate the fruit.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, port wine, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, port wine, clove, cinnamon. 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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