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Dessert

Pear Pickles

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

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

Pear Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears and drop them into cold water as you peel them.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar; cook until it becomes a thick syrup.

Cook and pour

  1. Add the pears and cloves to the syrup; cook until the pears can be pierced with a fork.

  2. Remove the pears with a fork and pour the hot syrup over them.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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. Pear + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the flavored syrup as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, cooked down with vinegar, thickens into the syrup that preserves the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Cooking the pears until pierced. Cook until a fork pierces the pears, not longer. Pears that are undercooked stay firm and resist syrup, while overcooked pears turn soft and break apart.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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