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Dessert

Compote of Pears

A sweet compote made by stewing pears with sugar, water, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Compote of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare the pears, leaving the stems on.

Stew and flavor

  1. Stew the pears in sugar and a little water.

  2. Flavor with the stick of cinnamon and cloves (remove the heads of the cloves).

Cool and serve

  1. When the pears are soft, place them carefully on a platter to cool.

  2. Arrange the cooled pears in a glass bowl or flat glass dish with the stems on the outer rim.

  3. Pour thick syrup over the pears before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main body and soft texture of the compote once stewed.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps form a thick syrup as it cooks down.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the stewed pears.
Cloves
Contribute a strong, aromatic spiced flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Stew the pears until soft. Pears need gentle, steady simmering in sugar and water until fully tender. Undercooked pears stay firm and grainy, while overcooking makes them collapse. Checking softness with a knife or skewer helps you stop at the right point.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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