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Dessert

Pear Pickle

A pickled pear recipe using sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, and pears.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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. Cut out the blossom end of the pears and peel if the skin is tough.

  2. Steam the pears until tender but not soft.

  3. Place the pears into glass jars.

Pickle and pour

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, and spices together for five minutes.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pears immediately.

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. Cinnamon + peartop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

  4. Clove + peartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cider + peartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main fruit; gentle steaming keeps them firm rather than mushy.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang.
Mixed whole cinnamon and cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Steam the pears until tender but not soft. Pears keep softening once they meet the hot syrup, so overcooking them first leads to mushy fruit. Stopping at tender leaves enough firmness to hold their shape in the jar.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, 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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