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Dessert

Compote of Pears

A sweet compote of pears simmered in sugar, water, Port wine, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pear 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 ↓

Compote of Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the pears, cut them in half, and remove the cores.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and water; bring to a boil and skim until clear.

  2. Add Port wine and cloves to the pot.

Cook the pears

  1. Place pears in a preserving pan and pour the sugar and wine mixture over them.

  2. Cover with paper and boil gently for about 2 hours 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.

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 + peartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Port wine + peartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + port winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the compote and helps the pears keep their shape while they cook.
Pears
Provide the main fruit body that softens into a tender, spoonable texture.
Port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, and colours the pears as they simmer.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil gently for about 2 hours. A rolling boil can break the pears apart before they become tender, while too little heat leaves them firm. A gentle simmer softens the fruit evenly and lets the syrup reduce slowly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, port wine, 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.

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