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Dessert

Sweet Pickled Pears

A preserved pear dish made by boiling pears with water, vinegar, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon, then cooling in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare the pears.

  2. Cut the pears in halves or quarters if very large. Leave small pears whole.

  3. Combine pears and water in a preserving kettle.

  4. Boil until tender.

  5. Remove the pears from the kettle.

Make the syrup

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon to the juice.

  2. Boil the mixture. Skim off any foam.

  3. Return the pears to the kettle.

  4. Boil until the syrup thickens.

Pack and store

  1. Transfer the pears to a jar.

  2. Pour the syrup over them.

  3. If the syrup thins after a few days, pour it off. Boil it again.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 when simmered and takes on the spiced syrup's flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as it thickens, helps give the pears a rich, preserved body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickling syrup its sharp, tangy balance against the sweetness.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, warm aroma and flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the pears until just tender before removing them. Pears cooked too long turn mushy and fall apart, while undercooked pears stay hard and do not absorb the syrup well. Boiling them in water first softens the flesh so it can take up the spiced, acidic syrup later.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

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