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Dessert

Stewed Pears

Stewed pears simmered with cloves, lemon rind, sugar, water, and port wine.

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 and stew

  1. Pare and divide the pears.

  2. In an enamelled preserving pan, combine pears, cloves, lemon rind, sugar, and water.

  3. Add the pear parings to improve the syrup, then remove them after 1 hour.

  4. Cover the pan and boil gently for 5-6 hours, depending on pear size.

  5. Add port wine 1 hour before finishing.

Finish

  1. Turn out to cool.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main body and fruit flavour of the dish, softening as they stew.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps thicken it as the liquid reduces.
Port wine
Adds depth and a rich, fruity aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Keeping the pan at a gentle boil. A rapid boil can break the pears apart and make the syrup cloudy, while a gentle simmer over many hours keeps the fruit whole and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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