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 ↓
Pear Preserve
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pears
Pare, halve, core, and weigh the pears.
If the pears are hard, boil them in water until tender.
Make the syrup
For the syrup, use ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.
Boil the syrup briefly, skim, and cool.
When the syrup is lukewarm, add the pears and boil gently until the syrup penetrates and the pears look clear.
Remove any pieces that cook before the others.
Take the cooked pears out of the syrup.
Boil the syrup down slightly.
Pour the syrup over the pears.
Optionally, stick a few cloves in the pears for added flavor.
Store
Store the preserves in jars with glass or tin tops, sealing with putty or plaster of Paris.
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.
-
Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together512 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
-
Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
-
Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together17,182 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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
- Form the bulk of the preserve and supply the fruit texture and flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, at this concentration, helps preserve it by drawing out water.
The step that matters
Boiling the pears in the syrup until the syrup penetrates. Gentle boiling lets the syrup slowly replace the water inside the fruit, which makes the pears clear and firm. Boiling too hard can break the pears apart and make the preserve cloudy.
Swap the clove
The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Gingerfits better
- Clovethe original
- Allspicefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar. 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.
You might also like
Clove Cake53 recipes
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.