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Compotes of Pears with Wine

A compote of pears simmered with water, sugar, cinnamon, and wine, then reduced to a syrup and poured over the pears.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Compotes of Pears with Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pears

  1. In a pan, combine the pears, water, sugar, and cinnamon.

  2. Cook until the pears are half done.

  3. Add the wine and cook for a few more minutes.

Make the syrup and serve

  1. Remove the pears and reduce the sauce to a syrup.

  2. Pour the syrup over the pears before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pear + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruit body and soften as they cook, becoming tender enough to spoon.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and reduces, helps thicken the sauce into a syrup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid, which reduces into the syrup.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce to a syrup. As liquid evaporates, sugar concentrates and the sauce thickens. Reducing too little leaves it thin, while reducing too far can scorch the sugar or make it overly sticky.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, wine. 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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