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Dessert

To Stew Pears

Pears stewed with cloves, sugar, and lemon peel, served with syrup.

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

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 ↓

To Stew Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pears.

  2. Stick a clove in the blossom end of each pear.

  3. Place the pears in a well-tinned saucepan with a new pewter spoon in the middle.

  4. Fill the saucepan with hard water.

  5. Cut lemon peel into thin strips.

Stew and serve

  1. Set it over a slow fire for 3 to 4 hours until the pears are soft and the water reduces.

  2. Add enough loaf sugar to create a thick syrup.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil with the pears.

  4. Hang the strips around the pears.

  5. Serve with the syrup in a deep dish.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Largest stewing pears
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they stew into a tender fruit.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the liquid and thickens it into a syrup as the water reduces.
Cloves
Add a warm, spiced aroma that infuses the pears during stewing.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils and a bright note to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Slow stewing until the pears are soft. A slow, gentle fire lets the pear flesh soften evenly through to the core while the water slowly reduces. Too fierce a heat can break the fruit apart before it becomes tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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