Name: Pineapple Au Naturel
Ingredients: 1 ripe pineapple; powdered sugar

Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Au Naturel

Ingredients

1 ripe pineapple
powdered sugar

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

Wash and dry the pineapple without peeling it.
Cut the pineapple into 1‑inch thick slices and remove the core from each slice.
Cut the slices into pieces that are pointed at the center and 1 inch wide at the peel.

Serve

Make a pyramid of powdered sugar in the center of a plate and surround it with the pineapple pieces.

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.

Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,841 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Provides the fruit itself, with its natural sweetness and tart, juicy flavor as the main element.
Powdered sugar: Serves as a dip, adding sweetness that contrasts with the pineapple's natural acidity.

“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.