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Dessert

Spiced Pears

Preserved pears cooked with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the pears.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine the sugar and vinegar.

  2. Add the pears and spices.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the pears are tender.

Store

  1. Allow to cool and store in jars.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Pear + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender fruit as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the pears.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the pears are tender. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugar on the pot bottom before the pears soften through. Gentle, steady heat lets the fruit cook evenly and absorb the syrup.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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