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Dessert

Spiced Pears

A preserved pear dish made with sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and other spices.

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 ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare the pears evenly.

  2. Insert 3-4 whole cloves into each pear.

Make the syrup and cook the pears

  1. In a pot, combine 3 cups of sugar and 1 pint of vinegar to make a syrup.

  2. Tie the cloves, cinnamon, and any other spices in a cloth and boil in the syrup.

  3. When the syrup is nearly thick, add the pears and cook until they look clear.

  4. Transfer the pears to a jar and pour the syrup over them.

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. 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
The fruit that cooks in the syrup and absorbs its sweetness and spice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice that flavours the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Adding the pears to the nearly thick syrup. The concentrated sugar syrup gradually draws water out of the fruit and firms its flesh. Cooking only until the pears look clear, rather than longer, helps prevent them from turning soft and mushy.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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