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Dessert

Grilled Pears

Pears grilled, soaked, and simmered in light syrup with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Grilled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Grill

  1. Prepare a strong charcoal fire.

  2. Grill the pears evenly until cooked.

Clean

  1. Soak the grilled pears in fresh water to remove the skin.

  2. Wash the pears in three or four waters until clean.

Syrup and finish

  1. Remove the core and place them in a light syrup with a little cinnamon.

  2. Boil the pears until fully cooked and the syrup thickens.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Syrup + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together990 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears (bon-chretiens)
Provide the fruit that is grilled, peeled and cooked in syrup.
Light syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and thickens as the pears boil down.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the syrup and pears.

The step that matters

Boil the pears until fully cooked and the syrup thickens. Pears need enough time in hot syrup to soften through the core. Stopping early leaves them firm, while over-boiling can break the fruit down and make the syrup too thick or sugary.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, cinnamon. 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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