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Dessert

Stewed Pears

A sweet dish of pears simmered in sugar, water, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and halve the pears, leaving the stems on and scooping out the cores.

Stew the pears

  1. Place the pears in a saucepan, stems uppermost, and add water, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon juice.

  2. Cover the saucepan and simmer gently until the pears are tender.

Finish

  1. Carefully remove the pears and arrange them on a serving dish.

  2. Boil down the syrup until thickened.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Their flesh softens during gentle simmering, becoming tender while keeping its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the syrup reduces, gives it body and a glossy thickness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the pears' colour fresh.
Cinnamon sticks
Infuse the syrup with warm, sweet aroma as the pears stew.
Whole cloves
Contribute a pungent, warm aroma that deepens the syrup's flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A hard boil breaks the pears' surface and makes them ragged and mushy. Gentle heat softens the fibres evenly while the pears hold their shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, 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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