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Dessert

Pears, Preserved Whole

This preserves whole pears in a spiced sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Pears, Preserved Whole

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the spices in a little water until flavored, then strain.

  2. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar to the strained liquid and bring to a boil.

Cook and pour

  1. Skim the mixture, then add the small, ripe, thinly peeled pears.

  2. Boil the pears in the syrup for about 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the pears and pour the syrup over them; make more syrup if needed to cover the pears.

  4. Optionally, add a tablespoon of brandy or port to each bottle before sealing.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 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
The fruit that softens as it cooks and absorbs the flavour of the syrup.
Lump sugar
Preserves the fruit and forms the syrup that sweetens the pears.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Whole ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the pears for about 20 minutes. Pears soften as they heat, and too long in boiling syrup can make them break down and turn mushy. Stopping once they are tender lets them keep their shape while still taking up the sugar and spice flavour.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

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