Skip to main content
Dessert

Spiced Pineapple

A preserved pineapple dish flavored with sugar, vinegar, cassia, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pineapples, remove the eyes, and slice them.

Cook and can

  1. Cook the sliced pineapple in the syrup over moderate heat for 10 minutes.

  2. In a separate pot, cook the sugar, vinegar, and spices for 10 minutes before adding the fruit.

  3. Remove the ginger root before canning.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Pineapple + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Cassia + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pineapple + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Forms the fruit base and supplies the main sweet, tropical flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and forms the syrup that the fruit cooks in.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness and balances the syrup.
Cassia buds
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Whole cloves
Add a strong, aromatic spice note to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup for the full 10 minutes before adding the fruit. Simmering lets the spices and vinegar flavor the syrup and lets the sugar thicken it. Timing also controls how soft the pineapple becomes, since extended heat breaks down the fruit.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cassia, clove, ginger. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes