Why it works: Pear and red wine work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓
65 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
Pare the pears.
Quarter the pears or stew them whole.
Stew
Place them in a deep earthen pan with cloves, lemon peel, red wine, and sugar.
Cover with brown paper and stew in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until tender.
Serve
Serve hot or cold, with one whole pear and the rest cut into quarters.
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.
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Pear + red winetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together64 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
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Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together512 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together849 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,150 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together942 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pears
- Provide the main body and flavour that softens and sweetens as they stew.
- Red wine
- Adds acidity and liquid that gently poaches the pears and colours them.
- Fine sugar
- Sweetens the poaching liquid and adds to the syrup that forms around the fruit.
The step that matters
Stewing until tender. Stewing slowly in covered gentle heat softens the pear's cell structure evenly. Pulling them too early leaves them firm and chalky, while overcooking makes them collapse and lose shape.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, clove, red wine, sugar):
- Plumfits better
- Applefits better
- Quincefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pear, clove, red wine, 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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