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Dessert

Pear Pickle

A pickled pear dish using cider vinegar, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Pear Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the blossom end from the pears and prick them with a fork.

Cook and jar

  1. In a pot, combine cider vinegar, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the pears to the boiling mixture and cook until tender.

  3. Seal the pears in jars while hot.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main body of the pickle and soften into a tender fruit texture when cooked.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the vinegar and helps the syrup taste rounded.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma that flavours the syrup and the pears.
Cloves
Adds strong, pungent aroma that deepens the spiced flavour of the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the pears until tender. Pears must soften fully so the syrup can penetrate, but overcooking makes them mushy and break apart. Watching for tenderness rather than a fixed time helps keep their shape.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove. 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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