Skip to main content
Dessert

To Bake Pears

Pears baked in a spiced port wine syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
To Bake Pears

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

To Bake Pears

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the poaching liquor

  1. Combine water, Seville orange juice, cinnamon, cloves, mace, and lemon peel in a pot and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add red port, loaf sugar, and cochineal.

Bake and serve

  1. Peel, halve, and core the pears.

  2. Place the pears in a pan and pour the liquor over them.

  3. Cover the pan with parchment paper and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + peartop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

Baking pears
Form the dish; they soften during baking and absorb the spiced liquor.
Red port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the liquor that the pears absorb.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the liquor become syrupy as it reduces.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor to balance the sweetness of the port and sugar.
Cochineal
Adds a red color to the liquor, tinting the pears.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. Pears vary in ripeness and density, so bake until a knife slides in easily. Underbaked pears stay firm and chalky, while overbaking makes them mushy and collapsed.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, cinnamon, clove, lemon, sugar, pear. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes