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Dessert

Compote of Pears

A dish of pears stewed whole in a sugar syrup flavoured with cinnamon, lemon peel and port wine.

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 ↓

Compote of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Pare the pears, leaving the stems on.

  2. In a preserving pan, combine pears, sugar, water, cinnamon, and lemon-peel.

  3. Simmer until the pears are tender.

  4. When half done, add the port wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Once fully cooked, remove the pears and place them in a deep dish.

  2. Strain the syrup, boil it again, and pour it over the pears.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  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

Pears
Provide the main body and fruit flavour of the compote as they soften in the syrup.
White sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the pears keep their shape while they cook.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity, slightly sweet aroma to the syrup.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and forms the liquid that gently poaches the pears.

The step that matters

Add the port wine halfway through cooking. Alcohol evaporates slowly during simmering, so adding the port at the halfway point lets some of its harsh edge cook off while its flavour stays in the syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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