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Dessert

Spiced Pears

Preserved pears cooked in a spiced vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Wipe the pears, cut them in half, and remove the core and skin.

  2. Stick 2 or 3 cloves into each pear half.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining vinegar, water, brown sugar, and spices (tied in cheesecloth) with thin shavings of lemon rind.

  2. Heat the syrup to boiling and boil for 5 minutes.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the pears and cook gently until tender.

  2. Lift the pears to sterile jars.

  3. Boil the syrup down until thick.

  4. Pour the syrup over the pears.

  5. Seal the jars.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main body and sweet fruit flavour of the preserve.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it boils down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down until thick. Reducing the syrup concentrates the sugar and vinegar, which thickens the coating and helps preserve the pears. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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