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 ↓
Pickled Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Pare the pears and cut them in halves if large, then core them.
Steam the pears until they can be pierced with a broom straw.
Make a syrup using sugar, water, and cinnamon, similar to peach syrup.
Simmer the pears in the syrup.
Place the pears in jars.
Boil down the syrup and pour it over the pears in the jars.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together600 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
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Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Cinnamon and sugar 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
Swap the pear
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Pearthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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