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Sweet Pear Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling pears with sugar, vinegar, and spices until syrup thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sweet Pear Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears, leaving the stems on.

Cook the pears

  1. Boil the pears in enough water to cover them until tender.

Make the pickle

  1. In a large pot, combine the cooked pears, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

  2. Boil the mixture until the syrup thickens.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  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

Pears
Provide the bulk of the fruit, softening when boiled and holding their shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps thicken the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the pickle.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture until the syrup thickens. Sugar and fruit juices concentrate as water evaporates, so the syrup thickens gradually. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup, while over-boiling can make the pears collapse or the sugar scorch.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, vinegar, clove, allspice, 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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