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Dessert

Spiced Pears

A preserved pear dish simmered with sugar, vinegar, spices, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Cut the pears in half, remove the seeds, and peel them.

  2. Insert 2 or 3 cloves into each pear half.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar and sugar to make a syrup.

  2. Divide the cinnamon, allspice, and ginger into two parts, tie in cheesecloth bags, and add to the syrup.

Cook and finish

  1. When the syrup begins to simmer, add the pears and lemon rind.

  2. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the flavored syrup as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens the vinegar into a syrup.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Whole cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma to the pears.
Cinnamon stick
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Ginger root
Adds a spicy, fragrant aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heat the pears only until the syrup boils. Pears cooked too long in hot syrup soften and break down. Bringing the syrup to a boil and then removing it from heat limits cooking so the fruit keeps its shape while it absorbs the spiced syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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