Name: Pear Pickle
Ingredients: small, sound pears; ½ cup cider vinegar per quart of pears; 1 cup sugar per quart of pears; 2 teaspoons allspice; 2 teaspoons cinnamon; 2 teaspoons cloves

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

Select small, sound pears and remove the blossom end.
Pierce each pear with a fork.

Make the pickle

For each quart of pears, combine ½ cup cider vinegar and 1 cup sugar in a pot.
Add 2 teaspoons each of allspice, cinnamon, and cloves to the pot and bring to a boil.
Add the pears to the boiling mixture and cook until tender.
Seal the pears in 10 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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together600 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

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 texture of the pickle, softening as they cook in the syrup.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pears.
Sugar: Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

Swap the pear

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

Applefits better
Quincefits about as well
Figfits about as well
Pearthe original

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