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To Preserve Winter Pears

A method for preserving pears in sugar syrup with 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 ↓

To Preserve Winter Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. Boil the pears in their skins until tender.

  2. Peel the pears and halve them if large; set aside until the next day.

  3. Keep enough of the boiling liquid to cover the pears.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. For every pint of liquid, add 1 lb of lump sugar, cloves, lemon peel, and cinnamon to taste.

  2. Once the sugar is melted, add the pears and boil slowly until they turn a nice red color.

  3. Transfer the pears to large jars and cover.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and turns red during slow boiling.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the pears.
Lemon peel
Adds acidity and bright aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly after the sugar melts. Boiling too hard can break the pears apart and make the syrup cloudy or sugary. A gentle simmer lets the sugar penetrate the fruit evenly and turns the pears a deep red without collapsing them.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, 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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