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Dessert

Dessert Creams

Pears simmered in claret wine and sugar, then served with a reduced pear and wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dessert Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. In a saucepan, combine the pears, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, and water. Set over medium heat and bring to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, add the claret wine and simmer until the pears are cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the pears and place them on a serving dish.

  2. Return the saucepan to the heat, adding an equal amount of pear syrup to the juice and water. Boil for about 15 minutes, then pour the sauce over the pears.

  3. Serve warm or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pear + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender fruit as they poach.
Claret wine
Adds deep color, fruity flavor and acidity to the sauce as it reduces.
Sugar
Sweetens the poaching liquid and helps the syrup thicken as it boils.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit and helps keep the pears pale.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma that complements the pears and wine.

The step that matters

Simmer the pears until just cooked. Gentle simmering softens the pears while keeping their shape. Vigorous boiling or overcooking can make them break down into mush and cloud the syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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