Skip to main content
Dessert

Pears, Baked

A baked pear dessert with lemon, cloves, allspice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pears, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pare and halve the pears, or quarter them if large, leaving the stalks on and removing the cores.

  3. Place the pears in a clean baking jar with a tight lid.

Bake

  1. Add the lemon rind cut into strips, juice of 1 lemon, cloves, allspice, and enough water to cover the pears.

  2. Stir in the sugar.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and bake in the cool oven for 5 to 6 hours, ensuring the oven is not too hot.

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

Pears
Their flesh softens during the long bake and becomes tender and sweet.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cooking liquid and adds body to the syrup around the fruit.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright, fragrant citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, peppery aromatic notes that deepen the flavour of the syrup.

The step that matters

Keeping the oven cool and the jar covered. A low, gentle heat for hours softens the pears evenly without breaking them or boiling the syrup too hard, which would make the fruit ragged and the syrup cloudy.

Swap the pear

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes