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Dessert

Baked Pears

A baked pear dessert with butter, sugar, water, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Pears

Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare, halve, and core the pears.

Bake

  1. Place the pears in a deep baking dish with water and sugar.

  2. Dot pieces of butter into each hollow of the pears.

  3. Stick whole cloves into each half of the pears.

  4. Bake until soft and slightly browned.

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. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pear + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 soft texture that the dish is built around.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pear surfaces brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the pears as it melts.
Whole cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pears.

The step that matters

Bake until soft and slightly browned. Pears can stay firm or turn mushy depending on time and heat. Baking until the flesh is just tender lets the sugars caramelise lightly at the surface without the fruit collapsing.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, butter. 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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