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Dessert

To Stew Pears

A sweet stew of pears cooked with sugar, cloves, lemon peel, cochineal, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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To Stew Pears

Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Stew Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Pare and halve the pears, then remove the core.

  2. Soak the pears in cold water to prevent browning.

Stew

  1. Place the pears in a copper stewpan as close together as possible.

  2. Add enough lump sugar to sweeten the pears.

  3. Add 4 cloves, a bit of lemon peel, and 1 tablespoon of prepared cochineal.

  4. Cover with water and stew until tender.

  5. Remove the pears and place them in a dish.

  6. If the syrup is not sweet enough, add more sugar and boil for 5 minutes.

  7. Strain the syrup over the pears.

Preserve

  1. To preserve, place in a jar, tie down, and add a glass of brandy to the syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pear + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 during stewing and becomes the main dish.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the pears and the syrup they cook in.
Prepared cochineal
Colours the syrup and pears red.

The step that matters

Soak the pears in cold water. Cut pear flesh oxidises and turns brown quickly on contact with air. Cold water slows this browning until the pears go into the stewpan.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, clove, brandy. 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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