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Dessert

Spiced Pears

A dish of pears simmered with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, vinegar, and brown sugar, served cold with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the pears.

Cook

  1. Add the pears and remaining ingredients to a pot.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with whipped cream.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provides the main body and fruit flavour, softening into tender slices as they cook.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the cooking liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the spices.
Stick cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the cooking liquid and fruit.
Whole allspice
Contributes warm, peppery aroma that complements the cinnamon and cloves.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes. Pears soften as they cook and can break down into mush if the pot boils hard for a long time. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer helps the slices hold their shape while the spices flavour the syrup.

Swap the pear

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

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

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