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Pear Pickle

A pickled pear recipe using cider vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pear Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Select small, sound pears and remove the blossom end.

  2. Pierce each pear with a fork.

Cook and jar

  1. In a pot, combine cider vinegar, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the pears to the boiling mixture and cook until tender.

  3. Seal the pears in jars while hot.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Small pears
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the spiced vinegar syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tangy flavor and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the pears until tender. Pears need to cook long enough to soften and take up the spiced syrup, but overcooking can make them mushy and fall apart. Piercing them first helps the syrup penetrate evenly.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove. 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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