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Dessert

Baked Pears

A baked pear dessert cooked with lemon, spices, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Baked Pears

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pears

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pare and halve the pears, leaving about ½ inch of stem.

  3. Remove the core with a knife and place the pears close together in a bright block tin saucepan.

Bake in syrup

  1. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, cinnamon, allspice, and cover with spring water.

  2. Dissolve 1 lb of loaf sugar in 1½ pints of water and pour over the pears.

  3. Cover the saucepan tightly and bake for 6 hours until tender and bright in color.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pear + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking pears
Provide the fruit that softens into a tender texture during long, slow baking.
Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the liquid to make a sweet syrup that flavours and coats the pears.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup and fruit.
Allspice
Adds a warm, clove-like aroma that deepens the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Cover the saucepan tightly and bake for 6 hours. A tight lid keeps the syrup from evaporating during the long bake, so the pears stay submerged and cook evenly. Low, slow heat softens the fruit gradually without breaking it down.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cinnamon, allspice, 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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