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Dessert

Crushed Pineapple

A preserved pineapple product made by crushing fresh pineapple, sweetening with sugar, and preserving in syrup with benzoate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Crushed Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Peel the pineapple, remove all the eyes and all the core.

  2. Slice the pineapple lengthwise into ½ inch thick slices.

  3. Cut the slices into spears.

  4. Cut the spears into ½ inch cubes.

  5. Blanch the pineapple in boiling water for 15 to 20 minutes.

  6. Place the pineapple in cooling pans.

  7. Cover the pineapple with granulated sugar.

  8. Stir frequently as the sugar begins to melt.

  9. Let it sit overnight in the cold syrup.

Make the syrup

  1. Drain off the syrup.

  2. Strain the syrup through a fine mesh sieve.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of benzoate of soda for each gallon of syrup to a kettle.

  4. Cook the syrup to 26 degrees on a Beaume saccharometer.

  5. Cool the syrup to 160 degrees.

Pack and process

  1. Fill containers with pineapple.

  2. Cover the pineapple with syrup.

  3. Cap the containers.

  4. Process half-gallon jars for 1 hour at 180°F (82°C).

  5. Process No. 10 cans for 20 minutes at 212°F (100°C).

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. 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

Fresh pineapple
Provides the fruit itself, which becomes the body of the finished crushed pack.
Granulated sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and forms the syrup, adding sweetness and preserving the fruit.
Benzoate of soda
Acts as a preservative that inhibits mold and yeast growth in the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup to 26 degrees Beaume. Syrup concentration controls sweetness and preservation. Too thin a syrup gives weak preservation and a watery pack, while overcooking makes it too thick and grainy.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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