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Dessert

Slaved Pears

Pears stewed in red wine, sugar, water, and cloves until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and red wine work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Slaved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare the pears and cut them in halves.

  2. Remove the cores and place them in a saucepan, flat side up.

Stew

  1. Pour red wine and enough water to cover the pears over them.

  2. Add sugar and cloves.

  3. Cover the saucepan and let them stew until the pears are tender and have a good red color.

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 + red winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they stew.
Red wine
Provides acidity and colors the pears a deep red as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the wine.

The step that matters

Cover the saucepan and stew until tender. Gentle, covered simmering softens the pears evenly while the wine slowly colors them. Stewing too hard or too briefly leaves pears uneven, tough, or pale.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

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