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Dessert

Conerved Pears

A method of preserving pears by simmering them in water and sugar syrup, optionally flavored with cochineal, cinnamon, or port wine.

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

Conerved Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the pears

  1. Place peeled pears in a stone pan with water.

  2. Simmer the pears until soft.

  3. Skim the pears.

  4. Let the pears cool.

Syrup and repeat

  1. Prepare a syrup with 3½ cups water and 1 pound sugar.

  2. Simmer the pears in the syrup for about 10 minutes.

  3. Let the pears sit in the syrup overnight.

  4. Pour off the syrup.

  5. Simmer the pears again for 10 minutes.

  6. Repeat this process three or four times.

  7. Optionally add powdered cochineal, cinnamon, or port wine during the boiling process.

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. Pear + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + port winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Their flesh softens and becomes tender through simmering, and they absorb the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pears and, in a thick syrup, helps preserve them by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Repeated simmering and resting in syrup. Sugar must gradually penetrate the fruit to preserve it. Letting the pears rest in syrup between boils allows the sugar to soak in, so skipping or rushing the repeats may leave the fruit less preserved.

“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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