Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓
German Giblets with Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Stew the goose giblets and pork chops together.
Add the quartered pears to the giblet liquor.
Season with cloves and sugar.
Serve the pears around the giblets in a dish.
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.
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Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together512 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,515 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Pork + peartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together93 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together17,182 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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
Swap the pear
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, clove, sugar):
- Applefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Quincefits better
- Pearthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pork, clove, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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