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Pickled Pears

A preserved pear dish made by cooking pears in a sugar and vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Pickled Pears

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pickled Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the pears and cook until they are tender and can be pierced with a fork.

  2. Remove the pears and place them in glass jars.

  3. Fill the jars with the syrup to overflowing and seal.

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.

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.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + peartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the pears by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve the fruit.
Pears
The fruit being pickled; it softens in the hot syrup and absorbs its flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the pears until tender. Pears must be simmered until a fork pierces them, but overcooking turns them mushy. Fruit that is only partly softened stays firm and does not take up the syrup evenly, so the texture and preservation both suffer.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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