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Pears in Sugar. Compote De Poires d'Ete.

A compote of pears simmered in sugar and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pears in Sugar. Compote De Poires d'Ete.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Blanch the pears in water until soft to the touch.

  2. Remove from water, peel, and place in fresh water with lemon juice to keep them white.

Cook the compote

  1. In a pot, combine sugar, lemon juice, and enough water to cover the pears.

  2. Bring to a boil and add the pears, ensuring they are submerged.

  3. Boil and add sugar for five days, boiling on the last day.

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

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

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Form the body of the compote, softening as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup, helping preserve the pears.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and slows browning, keeping the pears pale.
Cloves
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Keep the pears submerged in the syrup. Pears that poke above the liquid cook unevenly and can darken in the air. Keeping them fully covered lets them soften evenly and stay pale.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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