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 ↓
Baked Pears
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Peel and core the pears, then place them in a baking dish.
Sprinkle sugar over the pears.
Add lemon juice or orange peel and a cinnamon stick for flavor.
Pour enough water into the dish to dissolve the sugar.
Bake the pears until they are quite soft.
Serve warm with cream or milk.
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.
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Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together600 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
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Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,950 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, cinnamon, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Applefits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, cinnamon, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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