Skip to main content
Dessert

Compote of Pears

A compote of pears simmered in sugar syrup with cloves and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Compote of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Select golden pears that are not too ripe.

  2. Wash and cut them in half lengthwise, removing the core.

  3. In a saucepan, combine 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water to make a syrup. Bring to a boil.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pear halves and 12 whole cloves to the boiling syrup.

  2. Cook until the pears are tender.

Plate and serve

  1. Remove the pears and arrange them in a pyramid shape on a glass dish with the stem ends up.

  2. Slice the lemon thinly and sprinkle over the pears.

  3. Pour the syrup over the pears by the spoonful when slightly cooled.

  4. Allow the compote to cool completely before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Golden pears
Provide the fruit that softens and turns tender as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the pears hold their shape while cooking.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup the pears cook in.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and pears.

The step that matters

Cook until the pears are tender. Pears vary in ripeness and density, so cooking time changes. Undercooked pears stay firm and chalky, while overcooked pears turn mushy and lose their shape. Testing with a knife or skewer shows when the flesh is evenly soft.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, clove. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes