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Pineapple Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling pineapple with water and sugar until the fruit is tender and the syrup thickens.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the top and bottom of the pineapples and peel off the rough skin.

  2. Weigh the pineapples and cut them into slices, chips, or quarters.

  3. For each pound of fruit, add ½ cup of water to a preserving kettle.

  4. Place the kettle over the fire.

Cook the pineapple

  1. Cover the kettle.

  2. Boil gently until the pineapple is tender and clear.

  3. Remove the pineapple pieces using a fork or skimmer.

  4. Place the pineapple pieces in a dish.

  5. Add 1 pound of white sugar for each pound of fruit to the water and stir until dissolved.

  6. Return the pineapple to the kettle.

  7. Cover the kettle.

  8. Boil gently until transparent throughout.

  9. Remove the pineapple.

Jar and set

  1. Let it cool.

  2. Transfer the pineapple to glass jars.

  3. Simmer the syrup gently until thick and rich.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

  5. Secure the jars the next day.

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. 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

Pineapples
Provide the main fruit, whose tender, clear texture defines the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it thickens the syrup, helps preserve it and gives it body.

The step that matters

Boil gently until transparent throughout. Boiling too hard breaks the pineapple pieces apart, while too little cooking leaves them opaque. Slow cooking lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit, which is what makes the pieces look clear and keeps them intact.

“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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