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The Fragrant Pineapple

A sweet pineapple preserve made by boiling pineapple with sugar into a clear amber paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The Fragrant Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the pineapple

  1. Peel, slice, and core the pineapple.

  2. Sprinkle the pineapple slices with sugar and cover them overnight.

  3. In the morning, transfer the pineapple and syrup to a preserving kettle and bring to a boil.

  4. Boil for about 5 minutes, then pour into sterilized cans kept in boiling water.

Make the marmalade

  1. For marmalade, chop the pineapple finely after peeling and coring.

  2. Mix with 1 pound of sugar and cook for about 30 minutes.

  3. Strain through a puree sieve and return to the kettle.

  4. Cook, stirring constantly, until it becomes a clear, amber-colored paste.

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 + pineappletop 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

Pineapple
Provides the fruit base, flavour and pectin-bearing pulp that the marmalade is built from.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it cooks down, thickens the mixture into a set paste.

The step that matters

Cooking until a clear, amber paste forms. Stirring constantly keeps the sugar and fruit from scorching on the bottom of the kettle. The mixture thickens as water evaporates and sugar concentrates, so stopping too early leaves it runny and overcooking makes it bitter and dark.

“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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