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Pears, Pickled

A preserved pear dish made by cooking pears in a sweet and spiced vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pears, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the pears, or cut them into eighths if large.

  2. Place the pears in a jar and cook in a pan of water over steady heat until soft but unbroken.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Simmer the cores and peels in cider vinegar until reduced to half the quantity, then strain.

  2. For every half-pint of flavored cider vinegar, add 3 pounds of sugar, 1⅓ pints of cider vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, stick cinnamon, mace, and ginger.

  3. Boil the mixture to create a syrup, then add the pears and simmer for 20 minutes, ensuring they retain their shape.

Finish

  1. Allow to cool and finish off in the usual way.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe pears
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced syrup while holding its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pears.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer the pears gently in the syrup. Vigorous boiling breaks down the pear flesh, so the fruit turns mushy instead of holding its shape. Keeping the syrup at a gentle simmer lets the pears soften and absorb flavor while staying intact.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, cider, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, ginger. 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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