Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓
To Preserve Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pears
Pare the pears smoothly and thinly, leaving the stems and removing the black top at the blossom end. Place them in a pan of cold water.
Make a thin syrup with 1 quart of water and 1 pound of loaf sugar. Simmer the pears in the syrup for about 30 minutes.
Transfer the pears to a tureen and let them soak in the syrup for 2 days, ensuring they are fully covered.
Make the strong syrup
After 2 days, drain the syrup and add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of syrup. Stir in a little beaten egg white, and add thinly pared fresh lemon peel.
Boil the syrup for 10 minutes, skimming well. Add lemon juice to taste, then return the pears to the syrup.
Cook and jar
Simmer the pears in the strong syrup until they are transparent. Remove and let cool, inserting a clove in the blossom end of each pear.
Pour the warm syrup over the pears in glass jars. For red pears, add a little powdered cochineal to the syrup before adding the pears.
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.
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Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together512 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,150 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together942 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Large ripe pears
- Form the main body of the preserve, becoming tender and translucent as they cook in syrup.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens and thickens the syrup, preserving the pears and making them transparent.
- Fresh lemon peel
- Adds aromatic oils that brighten the flavour of the syrup.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
- 1 beaten egg white
- Binds and clarifies the syrup, collecting impurities that are skimmed off during boiling.
The step that matters
Simmering the pears until transparent. Simmering gently in strong syrup lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit. Boiling hard can break the pears apart, and stopping too early leaves them opaque.
Swap the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, egg, lemon):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Gingerfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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