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Dessert

Baked Pears

Pears baked with citrus juice, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and cochineal.

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

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.

Prepare the pears

  1. Peel small pears and leave the stalks.

  2. If using large pears, cut them in halves and core them.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the juice of 2-3 Seville oranges or lemons with a little peel, some cloves, and cinnamon in 1½ cups of water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid into a baking pan with the pears, adding plenty of sugar, a few cloves, and a little cochineal.

Bake

  1. Cover the pan with writing paper to prevent browning and tie it down securely.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender, preferably 2-3 days before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit that softens and turns tender during slow baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pears take on a glossy, syrupy character.
Seville oranges or lemons
Supply acidity and aromatic flavour to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Covering the pan before baking. The paper cover shields the pears from direct heat, slowing browning so they cook through to tenderness while keeping their pale colour.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, clove, cinnamon, 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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