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Dessert

Stewed Pears

Stewed pears simmered with sugar, lemon, cloves, and optional cochineal until tender, then served with reduced syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, halve, and core the pears.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan with a close-fitting lid, combine the pears, lemon rind, lemon juice, cloves, loaf sugar, and enough water to just cover the pears.

  2. If desired, add the essence of cochineal for color.

  3. Stew the pears gently for 4 to 5 hours, or until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Once tender, remove the pears and reduce the liquid by boiling rapidly.

  2. Strain the syrup over the pears and let cool before serving in a glass dish.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 that softens during slow stewing and absorbs the sweet syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as it reduces, thickens it into a glossy coating for the fruit.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for 4 to 5 hours. Rapid boiling can break the pears apart before they turn tender. A gentle simmer softens the fruit evenly while keeping its shape and letting the syrup concentrate slowly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, 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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