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Pickled Pears

A pickled pear recipe using sugar, vinegar, cloves, and cassia buds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Pickled Pears

Why it works: Clove and cassia match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 194 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and halve the pears.

  2. In a pot, combine 4 pounds of sugar and 1 gallon of vinegar.

  3. Add cloves and pounded cassia buds tied in a cloth.

  4. Boil the mixture.

  5. If the pears are hard, scald them slightly before adding to the vinegar mixture.

Pickle

  1. Pour the hot vinegar mixture 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.

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. Clove + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + cassiatop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sugar + cassiatop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pears and gives the pickle its tang.
Cloves
Adds warm, spiced aroma to the syrup.
Cassia buds
Adds a spicy, aromatic flavor to the vinegar mixture.

The step that matters

Scald hard pears before adding them. Hard pears stay firm and resist absorbing the hot syrup, so scalding them slightly softens the flesh and lets it take up the spiced vinegar more evenly.

Swap the cassia

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Cassiathe original

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