Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Pickle Pears

A sweet pickle made by preserving peeled pears in a sugar and vinegar solution with cinnamon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sweet Pickle Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the peeled pears and place them in a jar.

  2. For every pound of pears, add ¾ pound of sugar and ½ pint of vinegar.

Make the syrup

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the sugar, vinegar, cinnamon sticks, and cloves.

  2. Boil the mixture and pour it hot over the pears for three mornings.

Finish

  1. After three mornings, place all ingredients back in the kettle and bring to a boil.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 that is softened and flavored by the pickling liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon sticks
Contribute warm aroma to the syrup that soaks into the pears.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the pears for three mornings. The syrup must be hot when poured so it penetrates the fruit and begins softening and flavoring it. Repeating the hot pour over several days lets the sugar and vinegar gradually infuse the pears.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes