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Pineapple Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling pineapple in a vinegar and brown sugar syrup with cloves and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pineapple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine vinegar, brown sugar, whole cloves, and whole peppercorns in a pot and boil the mixture together.

  2. For added flavor, use 1 teaspoon of cinnamon tied in a cloth with 1/4 teaspoon of cloves.

Cook the pineapple

  1. Add pineapple pieces to the pot and boil until the fruit turns golden yellow.

  2. If the syrup is not rich, boil it down before pouring over the fruit.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pineapple + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Clove + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vinegar + pineappletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tangy flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Pineapple
Supplies the fruit that softens and turns golden while absorbing the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the fruit turns golden yellow. Cooking the pineapple long enough lets sugar caramelize slightly and the syrup concentrate, which gives color and depth. Stopping too early leaves the flavor thin and the syrup watery.

“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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