Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Pears

Baked pears are pears cooked with golden syrup and water, served with cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Baked Pears

Why it works: Pear and syrup work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 254 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300 °F (150 °C).

  2. Wipe the pears and arrange them in an enamel baking dish, placing the stalk ends upward.

Bake

  1. Pour a little water over the pears and add golden syrup, about 1 tablespoon per 3 pears.

  2. Bake for 2 hours or longer, basting frequently with the syrup and water.

  3. If the oven is too hot, cover the dish with an oven shelf.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or custard.

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. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Large sound pears
Soften slowly in the oven, becoming tender while keeping their shape.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a glossy, caramel-like coating as it reduces in the dish.

The step that matters

Keep the oven low and baste often. Slow, gentle heat softens the pears evenly without scorching the syrup. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and builds a glaze, so the fruit doesn't dry out during the long bake.

“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

Oranges in SyrupOranges in Syrup9 recipesSyrup SauceSyrup Sauce6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes