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Dessert

Sweet Pear Pickle

A pickled dessert made from Seckel pears, spices, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Pear Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Select perfect Seckel pears and leave the little stems on.

  2. Peel the pears and boil them in clear water until very tender.

Make the pickle syrup

  1. Mix the spices and divide into three parts; tie them in little muslin bags.

  2. In a large pot, combine vinegar and brown sugar to cover the fruit.

  3. Add the spice bags and bring the mixture to a boil.

Pack and steep

  1. Pack the pears in a stone jar and pour the boiling vinegar over them.

  2. For six mornings, return the vinegar to a boil and pour it over the pears.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Seckel pears
Provide the fruit that is cooked and then flavoured by the spiced vinegar syrup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper molasses flavour that balances the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding sharpness and helping keep the pears stable.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aroma to the syrup and infused fruit.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, peppery aroma that rounds out the spiced flavour of the syrup.
Ginger root
Adds a pungent, spicy aroma that brightens the sweet and sour syrup.

The step that matters

Returning the vinegar to a boil each morning. Reheating the vinegar and pouring it over the pears repeatedly lets the syrup penetrate and flavour the fruit gradually. Letting it cool too much weakens this effect, so the boil should be brought back up each time.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, clove, allspice, sugar, ginger, vinegar, cinnamon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, clove, allspice, sugar, ginger, vinegar, 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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