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Seckel Pears, Canned

Canned Seckel pears simmered with sugar, cinnamon, lemon, and red wine, then packed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Seckel Pears, Canned

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lemons, slice them, and remove the seeds.

  2. Select pears that are not overripe. Peel them, leaving the stems intact and removing the blossom end.

Cook the pears

  1. Place the pears in a preserving kettle with water, cinnamon, lemons, and sugar.

  2. Boil for one hour or until tender, checking with a fork.

  3. Transfer the pears to large porcelain dishes and strain the syrup through a linen cloth.

  4. Return the syrup and pears to the kettle and add the red wine.

  5. Heat until boiling, then remove from heat; do not boil after adding the wine.

Jar and seal

  1. Pack the pears into glass jars and seal them hermetically.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Pear + red winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Seckel pears
Form the main body of the preserve and soften into tender fruit during cooking.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Red wine
Adds acidity and flavor to the syrup, added after cooking so it is not boiled off.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweet syrup.
Whole cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the syrup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the wine. Alcohol and its delicate aromas evaporate when boiled, so the wine should only be heated to boiling and then removed from heat to keep its flavor in the syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, cinnamon, red wine. 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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