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Dessert

Pears, Baked

A baked pear dessert simmered with lemon rind, cloves, allspice, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pears, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Peel and halve the pears, or quarter them if they are large, leaving the stalks on and removing the cores.

  3. Place the pears in a clean baking jar with a tight-fitting lid.

Add the flavourings

  1. Add the lemon rind cut into strips, juice of ½ lemon, cloves, allspice, and enough water to cover the pears.

  2. Stir in the sugar.

Bake

  1. Cover the jar tightly and place it in the cool oven.

  2. Bake the pears for 5 to 6 hours, ensuring the oven remains cool.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pear + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 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 softens and turns tender during the long, gentle bake.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the syrup the pears cook in.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that perfume the syrup and balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Keeping the oven cool. A low, steady heat lets the pears soften slowly and hold their shape. Higher heat would cook them faster and can break down the fruit or make the syrup boil too hard.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, allspice, 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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