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Pear Sweet Pickles

A sweet pickle made by boiling pears in a syrup of cider vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pear Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and cut the pears in halves or quarters if very large; leave small pears whole.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves to make a syrup.

Steep and cook

  1. Pour the boiling hot syrup over the fruit for three mornings.

  2. On the third day, boil the fruit in the syrup until tender.

Seal

  1. Seal the jars while hot.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pear + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Pure cider vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the fruit and gives the pickles their tangy flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds aromatic, warm spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit until tender. Pears must be cooked through so they soften and take up the syrup, but overcooking makes them mushy and break apart. Checking for tenderness without overboiling keeps the pieces intact.

Swap the pear

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

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

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

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