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Dessert

Cowipote of Pears

A dessert of pears poached in a sugar, water, clove, and port wine syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pear 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 ↓

Cowipote of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar, water, and cloves until thick.

  2. Remove the cloves and add port wine.

Poach and serve

  1. Boil pears in water for a few minutes until the skin can be removed.

  2. Core the pears and place them in the syrup.

  3. Gently boil for 20 minutes or 30 minutes if the pears are large, until tender.

  4. Serve the pears with the syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Port wine + peartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + port winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking pears
Firm flesh holds its shape through long poaching and turns tender without falling apart.
Sugar
Sweetens the poaching liquid and thickens it into a syrup that coats the pears.
Port wine
Adds rich, fruity flavor and deep color to the syrup.

The step that matters

Gently boil the pears in the syrup. Vigorous boiling can break the pear flesh apart and make it mushy. A gentle simmer lets heat penetrate slowly so the pears soften evenly while keeping their shape.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, port wine, pear. 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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