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Dessert

Spiced Pears

A preserved pear dish made with sugar, vinegar, mace, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and pears.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spiced Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and halve the tart pears.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare a syrup by combining vinegar, sugar, mace, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves in a pot.

  2. Cook the syrup over low heat until the sugar dissolves.

Cook the pears

  1. Add the pears to the syrup and cook slowly for about 3 hours.

  2. If the pears are acidic, they will turn a rich red color.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup as it dissolves and concentrates.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Tart pears
Supply the fruit that softens during slow cooking and takes on the syrup's flavour.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma to the syrup.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the pears slowly in the syrup. Gentle, long cooking softens the fruit and lets it absorb the syrup without breaking apart. High heat would toughen the outside or scorch the sugar before the pears are tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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