Skip to main content
Dessert

Another Way to Stew Pears

A sweet stew of pears, brown sugar, cloves, and port wine, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Another Way to Stew Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and quarter the pears, removing the core, and place them in cold water to prevent browning.

Stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the pears, brown sugar, cloves, and enough cold water to cover the fruit.

  2. Cover the pan and simmer gently until the pears are red and tender.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the port wine.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold with cream.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Sugar + port winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking pears
Provide the main fruit, which softens and turns tender during gentle simmering.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the deep colour and flavour of the syrup.
Port wine
Adds acidity and fruity aroma, added at the end to keep its flavour bright.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. A gentle simmer lets the pears cook through evenly and turn tender without breaking apart. Vigorous boiling can break the fruit down and make the syrup cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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.

You might also like

Clove CakeClove Cake53 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes