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Sweet Pickled Pears

A sweet pickle made by preserving pears in a vinegar and sugar brine with cinnamon, allspice, and cloves.

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

Sweet Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Heat the vinegar in a pot.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Place the cinnamon, allspice, and cloves in a spice bag and add to the pot.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Pack the jar

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pears in a jar.

  2. Ensure the pears are slightly mellow before adding.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Clove + peartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives the pears a thick, rich body.
Pears
Soften in the hot syrup and absorb its sweetness and tang.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Ensure the pears are slightly mellow before adding. Fruit that is too firm will not take up the hot syrup evenly, while fruit that is too soft can turn mushy once it sits in the liquid.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, 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.

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