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Pickled Pears

A pickled pear preserve made with sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and pears.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pickled Pears

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pears.

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

  3. Skim the mixture, then add the pears and boil until soft.

Jar and serve

  1. While hot, place the pears in a jar and sprinkle with spices.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the pears in the jar.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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 cooking and forms the bulk of the preserve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup that surrounds the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the syrup a sharp, tangy balance against the sugar.
Whole cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma to the syrup and fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Adds a sweet, woody aroma that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the pears until soft. Pears cook quickly, and boiling too long breaks down their cell walls until they turn mushy. Stopping when they are just tender keeps their shape while the syrup still penetrates the fruit.

Swap the pear

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

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

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