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Pickled Pears

Pears preserved in a sweet vinegar solution with cinnamon and cloves.

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

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 ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Steam the pears until soft.

  2. Stick a few cloves into each pear.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Boil the sugar, vinegar, and spices together.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pears.

  3. Repeat this process three times, letting the pears stand for five days each time.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Pears
Main fruit; steaming softens them so they absorb the syrup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the pears in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, preserving tang.
Cloves
Adds warm aromatic spice flavor that infuses the pears.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeating the hot syrup pour over five days. Each repeated pour and rest lets the syrup penetrate and flavor the pears gradually, and reboiling the syrup each time keeps it hot enough to help preserve the fruit.

Swap the pear

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

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

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