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Preserve

To Preserve Red Pears

This recipe preserves pears in a sweet red syrup made with wine, cloves, and cinnamon.

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

To Preserve Red Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the pears and measure out the same weight of sugar.

  2. Parboil the pears and then peel them.

Make the syrup and cook the pears

  1. Clarify the sugar as directed, then add the wine, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil the pears in the mixture until they are clear and red.

  3. Remove the pears and continue boiling the syrup until it thickens.

  4. Add the pears back into the thickened 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.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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
Provide the fruit that softens and takes on colour and flavour from the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish, and as it concentrates in boiling it preserves the fruit and thickens the syrup.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the syrup and helps give the pears their red colour.
Cloves
Add a warm, spiced aroma to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the pears in the mixture until they are clear and red. Gentle boiling lets the sugar syrup slowly penetrate the fruit, making it clear and firm. Boiling too hard or too long breaks down the pear flesh and turns it soft and mushy.

Swap the pear

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

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

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