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Dessert

Canned Pine-apple

A preserved pineapple in syrup, optionally flavored with lemon juice.

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 ↓

Canned Pine-apple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Slice the pineapple thinly and cut the slices in half.

  2. Make a syrup by boiling ½ pound of sugar in 1 pint of water.

  3. Cook the pineapple in the boiling syrup until tender.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the pineapple in jars with plenty of syrup.

  2. Add lemon juice for flavor if desired.

  3. Screw the tops on tightly and store in a cool, dark place.

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. Sugar + pineappletop 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
Provides the fruit, which softens as it cooks in the hot syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fruit.

The step that matters

Pack the pineapple fully covered in syrup. Pineapple left exposed above the syrup can darken and spoil sooner. Keeping every piece submerged limits contact with air and helps the jars keep well.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pineapple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple. 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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