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Baked Pears

A simple oven-baked pear dish with sugar, butter, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Baked Pears

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 ↓

Baked Pears

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare and cut the pears in half, then core them.

  3. Arrange the pear halves in a baking dish.

Season and bake

  1. Sprinkle sugar over the pears and add small bits of butter.

  2. Insert a clove into each pear half.

  3. Bake until the pears are soft.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pear + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Become soft and tender as they bake, forming the body of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the pears and helps them brown lightly on the surface as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the pears brown and carry flavour in the baking dish.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pears.

Swap the clove

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

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

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