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Pineapple Sauce

A sweet pineapple sauce made with pineapple, powdered sugar, water, lemon juice, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, combine cold water, powdered sugar, and lemon juice.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add cornstarch to thicken the sauce.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, stir in the pineapple.

  2. If the sauce is too thick for pudding, add whipped cream.

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. Pineapple + sugartop 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

Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and dissolves into the water to form the sauce base.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats and gelatinizes in the liquid.
Sliced pineapple
Supplies the fruit flavor and pieces in the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the pineapple flavor.

The step that matters

Add cornstarch to thicken the sauce. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to swell and thicken fully. Adding it to a mixture that is not hot enough, or stirring poorly, can leave lumps or a thin sauce.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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