Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Pears Red

A method for preserving pears in a sweet, red syrup made with port wine, sugar, lemon, spices, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

To Preserve Pears Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Parboil the pears in water and peel them.

Make the syrup and cook the pears

  1. In a pot, combine the sugar, port wine, lemon juice and rind, cochineal, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil the pears in this mixture until they become clear and red.

  3. Remove the pears and place them in a jar.

  4. Strain the syrup, boil it again, and pour it over the pears.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pear + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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 preserve, softening and turning clear as they cook in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at equal weight to the pears, helps preserve them.
Port wine
Adds liquid and a rich, fruity flavour to the syrup.
Cochineal
Colours the pears red.

The step that matters

Boiling the pears until clear and red. Pears need to cook long enough to become translucent and absorb the syrup, but overcooking can make them collapse and go mushy. Watching for clearness rather than a set time helps the fruit hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes