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Pears, Compote of

A compote of pears simmered in a sugared syrup with optional lemon rind, vanilla, or cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 942 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pears, Compote of

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. Peel the pears and cut hard baking pears into halves or quarters, reserving one large piece for the center.

  2. Place the pears in a syrup made with sugar and water.

  3. Add cochineal and your choice of lemon rind, vanilla, or cloves.

  4. Simmer gently until the pears are tender but not broken.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the pears well and place them on a dish.

  2. Boil the syrup quickly until thick.

  3. Once cold, strain and pour the syrup over the pears just 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. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe juicy pears
Provide the fruit flavor and tender texture that the syrup coats and sweetens.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, once boiled down, thickens it into a glaze for the fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the pears are tender but not broken. Vigorous boiling breaks down the pear flesh and makes it mushy. A gentle simmer softens the fruit while keeping its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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