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To Stew Pears

Stewed pears cooked with brown sugar, water, lemon rind, cloves, and vinegar until tender.

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

  1. Halve the pears and remove the cores.

  2. Place the pears in a stewpan with brown sugar, water, lemon rind, cloves, and vinegar.

  3. Stew gently for 4 to 5 hours until tender. The vinegar will give the pears a red color.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the main body of the dish, softening into tender fruit during long gentle stewing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor to the syrup the pears cook in.
Vinegar
Acidity that helps the pears take on a red color during stewing.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 4 to 5 hours until tender. Long, gentle heat breaks down the pear's cell walls slowly so it turns tender without falling apart. A hard boil can disintegrate the fruit and make the syrup cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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