Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Honey

A preserve made from pineapple, apples, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple Honey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple base

  1. Pare the apples.

  2. Cook the apples.

  3. Strain the apples as you would for making jelly.

  4. Return the strained apples to the fire.

Add pineapple and cook

  1. Add the grated pineapple.

  2. Add an equal amount of sugar.

  3. Cook until it jellies.

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 + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Supply natural pectin, which helps the preserve set into a jelly-like texture.
Pineapple
Provides the main flavor and bulk of the preserve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken and set while preserving it.

The step that matters

Cook until it jellies. The preserve sets only when sugar, pectin and acid reach the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long can make it thick and sticky.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes