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 Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pare and cut the pineapple into pieces.
Add the pineapple pieces to a pot with 1 quart of water.
Cover and boil until very soft.
Mash the mixture and strain it to extract the juice.
Make the syrup
Add 1 pound of sugar to 1 pint of the juice.
Boil the mixture until it becomes a rich syrup.
Bottle
Pour into bottles and cork tightly.
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.
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Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Supplies the juice and the main fruit flavor of the syrup.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and body, and as it concentrates it helps the syrup keep.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice with sugar until it becomes a rich syrup. Water evaporates as the mixture reduces, concentrating the sugar and thickening the liquid. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils sooner, while boiling too long can darken it and make it stiff.
“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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