Name: Baked Pears
Ingredients: Pears; Cloves; Beaten cinnamon; Seville orange or lemon peel; Sugar; Rose-water; Red port or brandy (optional); Cream (optional); Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

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 ↓

Baked Pears

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Quarter the pears, peel off their skins, and core them.
Prepare a crust of fine pastry and lay the pears inside.
Sprinkle cloves, beaten cinnamon, and finely chopped Seville orange or lemon peel over the pears.
Add the liquid from baking the pears into the pie.
Close the pie and place it in the oven.
Optionally, after baking, raise the lid on one side and add sugar, rose-water, beaten cinnamon, and red port or brandy, or 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.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together600 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,987 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together512 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, cinnamon, orange, sugar, rose, brandy, cream):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Quincefits better
Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, orange, sugar, rose, brandy, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.