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Preserve

Spiced Pears

Pears peeled, cored and cooked in a sweet vinegar syrup flavoured with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel the pears.

  2. Core the pears.

Cook and spice

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, ground clove, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Add the pears and cook until a broom corn can easily pass through them.

  3. Place the spices in a bag for easier removal before serving.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Main fruit; cooking softens its flesh until tender and it takes on the syrup's flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the syrup a sharp, bright tang balancing the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the syrup and pears.
Ground clove
Contributes a strong, warm aroma that flavours the syrup.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic note to the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Cook until a broom corn can easily pass through the pears. This test shows the pears have softened fully throughout. Stopping early leaves the flesh firm and less infused with the spiced syrup, while overcooking can make the pears collapse and turn mushy.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Pearthe original

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