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Dessert

Pineapple Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from grated pineapple, sugar, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut, peel, and weigh the pineapple, then grate it and press it through a colander, saving all the juice.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of water for every 3 pounds of fruit and boil until tender.

  2. Add ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit and the juice of 1 lemon.

  3. Stir in the saved pineapple juice and boil for about 10 minutes.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Supplies the fruit bulk, flavour, and body of the marmalade.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, helps thicken and preserve the marmalade.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.

The step that matters

Boiling after the sugar and juice are added. As water evaporates, the sugar and acid concentrate, and this is what lets the marmalade thicken. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long risks scorching the sugar at the bottom of the pot.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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