Skip to main content
Dessert

Compote of Pears

A compote made by simmering pears in a sugar, water, Port wine, cloves, and cinnamon mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Compote of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Peel the pears and remove the cores.

  2. In a pot, combine the sugar and water; bring to a boil and skim until clear.

  3. Add the Port wine, cloves, and cinnamon to the sugar mixture.

Cook the pears

  1. Place the pears in a preserving pan and pour the sugar and wine mixture over them.

  2. Cover with paper and simmer gently until tender.

  3. Transfer the pears to a deep baking dish to cool.

  4. Garnish with slices of preserved orange.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pear + cinnamontop 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. Pear + clovetop 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

Pears
Provide the fruit body that softens and turns tender during gentle simmering.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the pears hold their shape while they cook.
Port wine
Adds depth and fruity flavour to the syrup and colours the pears.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A gentle simmer softens the pears evenly without breaking them apart. A hard boil can turn the fruit mushy and cloud the syrup, so the pears may fall apart before they are tender.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, port 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes