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Dessert

Pears, Pickled

A sweet and spicy pickled pear recipe using cider, vinegar, sugar, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, mace, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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.

  2. Cook them in a jar placed in a pan of water over steady heat until soft but unbroken.

Make the syrup

  1. Simmer the cores and peels in cider until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add 3 pounds of sugar, 1⅓ cups of vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, stick cinnamon, mace, and ginger to the flavored cider, and boil to create a syrup.

Finish and store

  1. Add the pears to the syrup and simmer for 20 minutes, ensuring they retain their shape.

  2. Cool the mixture and store as usual.

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

Pears
Provide the fruit itself, which softens during cooking while holding its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup, and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pears.
Cider
Forms the flavoured base of the syrup, carrying flavour from the cores and peels.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmering the pears in the syrup. Vigorous boiling breaks down fruit cell walls and softens pectin, so the pears can collapse. A gentle simmer in sugar syrup keeps them tender but intact.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, cider, vinegar, sugar, 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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