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Dessert

Baked Pears

A baked pear dish with sugar, port wine, cloves or cinnamon, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Pears

Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Remove the skins from the pears and cut them in half.

  3. Take out the cores and place a thin slip of lemon peel in each core cavity.

Season and bake

  1. Sprinkle the pears with sugar and strew cloves or pounded cinnamon among them.

  2. Pour the port wine into the dish with the pears.

  3. Cover the dish with a large sheet of brown paper, tied on.

  4. Bake in the oven until tender, checking with a straw to ensure they are cooked through without breaking.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pear + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main body of the dish, softening into tender fruit as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the pears and helps them caramelize slightly at the surface.
Port wine
Adds moisture and a rich, fruity flavor that soaks into the pears as they cook.
Cloves or cinnamon
Provide warm, aromatic spice that perfumes the pears during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until tender without breaking. Pears need enough heat for the starch and cell walls to soften, but over-baking makes them collapse. Checking with a straw tests whether the centre is cooked through while the fruit still holds its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, port wine, 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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