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Dessert

Baked Pears

A baked pear dish cooked with red wine, cloves, sugar, water, and lemon peel.

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 red wine work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel and halve the pears, removing the cores.

Bake and stew

  1. Place the pears in a pan with red wine, cloves, sugar, and enough water to cover.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

  3. Transfer to a low heat and stew gently.

  4. Add grated lemon peel and more sugar if needed.

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 + red winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pears
Soften during baking and stewing, becoming tender and absorbing the wine and sugar flavours.
Red wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and gently colours the pears as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the pears take on colour and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. Baking in the cooking liquid softens the pear flesh slowly. Pulling them too early leaves them firm, while overcooking makes them mushy and collapsed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, red wine, clove, 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.

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