Name: Stewed Fruit
Ingredients: 1 cup cold water; 1 cup sugar; Fruit of your choice (pears, peaches, berries, etc.); 1-2 cloves (optional); 1 small stick of cinnamon (optional); 1 slice of lemon or orange peel (optional)

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 ↓

Stewed Fruit

Ingredients

1 cup cold water
1 cup sugar
Fruit of your choice (pears, peaches, berries, etc.)
1-2 cloves (optional)
1 small stick of cinnamon (optional)
1 slice of lemon or orange peel (optional)

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Combine cold water and sugar in a pot.
Bring the mixture to a boil for 10 minutes.
Add the fruit and simmer until tender.
For pears and peaches, add cloves and cinnamon.
For berries, use ½ cup of water and no additional flavoring.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Pear + peachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together114 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together600 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Sweetens the syrup and helps the fruit hold its shape as it cooks.
Fruit: Provides the main flavor and softens into tender pieces as it simmers.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pear, peach, cinnamon, lemon):

Cardamomfits better
Gingerfits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Clovethe original

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