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Preserved Pine Apples

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pineapple and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 298 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Preserved Pine Apples

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut off the stalks and tops of the pineapples, removing all leaves.

  2. Boil a thin syrup and gently add the pineapples, cooking until tender enough to insert a pin easily.

  3. Leave the pineapples in the syrup overnight.

  4. Drain the syrup and clarify enough sugar to cover the pineapples, using the syrup they were boiled in instead of water.

  5. Cover the pineapples with paper to keep dust off.

  6. Pour off the syrup the next day, boil it briefly, and repeat this every other day for five to six times until the syrup thickens.

  7. Once cold, cover the pineapples with paper dipped in brandy and tie it down.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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