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Pickled Pears

Pickled pears are pears preserved in a vinegar and sugar syrup with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Pickled Pears

Why it works: Pear and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the pears.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar and sugar, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the pears and cinnamon to the pot.

  3. Simmer until the pears are tender.

Jar and store

  1. Pack the pears into sterilized jars and pour the syrup over them.

  2. Seal the jars and store in a cool, dark place.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

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

Pears
Provide the fruit that softens during simmering and becomes the main body of the preserve.
Vinegar
Acidifies the syrup, giving the pickle its sharp tang and helping preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sourness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavor to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer until the pears are tender. Pears must be cooked through so they absorb the syrup, but overcooking makes them mushy and break apart. Check tenderness with a fork rather than relying on time alone, since fruit size and ripeness vary.

Swap the pear

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

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

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