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Dessert

Baked Pears

A dessert of pears cooked in a sweet wine and spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked Pears

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Baked Pears

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine water, mace, cinnamon, and cloves; bring to a boil.

  2. Add white wine and the juice of Seville oranges; sweeten with loaf sugar.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut baking pears into halves or quarters and add them to the syrup.

  2. Transfer the pears to a 350°F (175°C) oven or a saucepan on the stove.

  3. Cover and cook until the pears are soft.

  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.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + peartop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking pears
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced wine syrup as it cooks.
White wine
Forms the main liquid of the syrup, adding acidity and flavour that the pears take on.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup to taste, balancing the acidity of the wine and oranges.
Seville oranges
Add sharp acidity and citrus aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook covered until the pears are soft. Pears vary in firmness, and under-cooking leaves them hard because the cell walls soften slowly with heat. Cooking covered keeps the liquid around the fruit so it cooks evenly without drying out. Check with a knife rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, white wine, orange, sugar, 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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