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Dessert

Baked Pears

A simple baked pear dessert with lemon, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Baked Pears

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pare pears and cut them in half, leaving the stalk intact on one half.

  3. Scoop out the core from each pear half.

  4. Place pears in a clean, tightly sealed baking dish.

Make the syrup and bake

  1. Add lemon juice, lemon zest, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and enough spring water to cover the pears.

  2. Dissolve loaf sugar in the water and pour it over the pears.

  3. Cover the dish tightly and bake for 6 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the body of the dish, softening slowly into tender fruit during the long, gentle bake.
Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the poaching liquid, sweetening the pears and helping them turn soft and glossy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and helps keep the pear flesh pale.

The step that matters

Keeping the dish tightly covered. A tight seal traps steam so the pears cook gently in their own liquid over six hours. If the lid lets moisture escape, the syrup reduces and the pears can dry or scorch at the top.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, cinnamon, allspice, clove, 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.

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