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Sweet Pear Pickles

Sweet pears pickled in a syrup of vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Pear Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon sticks, and cloves tied in small bags.

  2. Boil the mixture until a good syrup forms.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pears to the syrup.

  2. Cover the pot and cook on low heat until the pears can be pierced with a straw.

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.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + peartop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Clove + peartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it cooks down into a preserving liquid.
Cinnamon sticks
Infuse the syrup with warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cloves
Add pungent, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Bartlett or sickle pears
The fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced, sweet-sour syrup during gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the pears on low heat. Gentle heat softens the pears evenly and lets them absorb the syrup without breaking apart. Boiling hard can split the fruit and turn it mushy, so test with a straw until it pierces easily.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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