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Pineapples

A chilled fruit salad of pineapple and orange, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,664 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Pull out a green spike leaf from the pineapple to check ripeness.

  2. Pare the pineapple and remove the eyes with a sharp knife.

  3. Use a silver fork to pick the flesh from the core, starting at the stem end.

  4. Cut the top of the pineapple straight across, leaving about 1 inch of depth.

  5. Trim the bottom so the pineapple stands level.

  6. Cut out the inside of the pineapple, leaving a wall ¾ inch thick.

  7. Pick the flesh into small pieces, discarding the core.

Make the salad

  1. Peel the oranges, remove the white part, and slice the fruit.

  2. Combine the orange pulp and juice with the shredded pineapple, cover with sugar, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Provides the main fruit flesh, juice and sweetness, and its shell serves as the serving vessel.
Oranges
Add juice, aromatic citrus flavour and a touch of acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws moisture out of it, creating a syrupy juice as it chills.

The step that matters

Check ripeness before cutting. Pineapple does not get noticeably sweeter after it is harvested, so a pineapple that is not ripe when bought will taste sour and starchy however it is prepared. Checking the spike leaf first helps you choose one that is ripe.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar. 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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