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Pickled Pears

A pickled pear recipe using vinegar, sugar, and spices, preserved over nine days.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine vinegar and sugar in a pot to make a thick syrup.

  2. Add cinnamon, allspice, and ground mace to the syrup.

Pickle the pears

  1. Pour the syrup over the prepared pears.

  2. The next morning, pour off the syrup, heat it, and pour it back over the pears.

  3. Repeat this process for nine days.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pear + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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
The main fruit, which softens and absorbs the spiced, sweet-sour syrup over the days.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that flavours the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, peppery aroma to the syrup.
Ground mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heating the syrup each morning. Reheating the drained syrup before pouring it back helps it carry the spice flavour into the fruit. Repeating it daily builds up the sugar and acid concentration, which is what keeps the pears preserved over the nine days.

Swap the mace

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

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

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