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Dessert

Of Pears

A dessert of pears simmered with sugar, lemon, cinnamon, claret wine, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. Peel the pears and cut the stem half its length.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the pears with sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, and water.

  3. Bring to a boil over moderate heat.

  4. Once boiling, add the claret wine and simmer until cooked.

Reduce the syrup and serve

  1. Remove the pears and place them on a dish.

  2. To the remaining juice, add an equal amount of pear syrup or sugar syrup.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, then pour over the pears and serve warm or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pear + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 fruit base that softens and becomes tender as it cooks in the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as the liquid reduces.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, and colours the pears as it simmers.
Pear syrup or sugar syrup
Adds sweetness and body to the reduced juice that is poured over the pears.

The step that matters

Simmering until cooked. Simmering gently keeps the pears intact while they soften. A hard boil can break them apart and make the fruit mushy, so the pears should be checked with a knife rather than judged by time alone.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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