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Dessert

Pickled Pears

A preserved pear dish made by boiling pears, then simmering them in a sugar, vinegar, and spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pickled Pears

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. Peel the pears and cut out the ends, leaving the stems intact.

  2. Place the pears in a preserving kettle with 1 quart of water and boil until easily pierced with a fork.

  3. Remove the pears and lay them out on a dish.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. In the same juice, add 1½ pounds of sugar, 1 pint of vinegar, ½ ounce of stick cinnamon, ½ ounce of cloves, and ½ ounce of grated ginger.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes and skim off any foam.

  3. Return the pears to the pot and boil until the syrup thickens.

Jar and serve

  1. Remove the pears and place them in jars.

  2. Boil the syrup for an additional 5 minutes and pour it over the pears in the jars.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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 + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main fruit, softened by boiling until a fork pierces them easily.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickled flavour and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until it thickens. Sugar and vinegar concentrate as the syrup boils down, so the pears must be returned only when the syrup is thick enough to coat them. Under-boiling leaves a thin, watery syrup, while overboiling can make the syrup too stiff or sticky.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Quincefits about as well
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

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