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Dessert

Baked Pears

Pears are filled with brown sugar, baked with cinnamon, and optionally lemon and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Pears

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare and core the pears.

  2. Fill the pears with brown sugar.

Bake

  1. Place the pears in a covered dish and cover with water.

  2. Add a little more sugar and a stick of cinnamon.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until tender.

  4. Omit the sugar and add lemon slices and half as much molasses as water.

  5. Bake until tender.

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 + 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cinnamon + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Their flesh softens and turns tender as they bake, becoming the body of the dish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and melts into a syrup that coats and browns the pears.
Molasses
Adds deep, caramel-like sweetness and a darker color to the cooking liquid.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic flavor to the syrup and fruit.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the molasses.

The step that matters

Bake slowly in a covered dish until tender. A low oven with the dish covered lets the pears soften evenly and keeps them moist. Overbaking or uncovering too long can make the flesh mushy or dry out the syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, cinnamon, molasses. 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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