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Dessert

SftZL'ed Pears

Pears stewed with sugar, lemon peel, cloves, allspice, and red liquor, served with cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

SftZL'ed Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and halve or quarter the pears, placing them in water to prevent browning.

  2. Pack the pears in a block tin stew pan and sprinkle with sugar to taste.

Stew

  1. Add lemon peel, cloves, and cracked allspice.

  2. Cover the pears with water and add some red liquor.

  3. Cover the pan and stew for three to four hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the pears and pour the cooking liquid over them 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pear + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Large pears
Soften during long stewing to become tender and form the body of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the pears and their cooking liquid.
Lemon peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma that lifts the warm spices.
2 cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the stewing liquid.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that deepens the stewed fruit.

The step that matters

Stew covered until fully tender. Pears soften slowly as their cell walls and starches break down in gentle, covered heat. Stopping early leaves the fruit firm and gritty, so the full three to four hours matters.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, clove, allspice. 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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