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Dessert

Spiced Pineapple

A preserved pineapple dish flavored with cassia, cloves, ginger, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pineapples, remove the eyes, and slice them.

Cook the syrup and pineapple

  1. Cook the syrup with spices for 10 minutes over moderate heat.

  2. Add the sliced pineapple to the syrup and cook for another 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the ginger root before canning.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Pineapple + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Cassia + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pineapple + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Forms the fruit pieces, which become tender as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Cassia buds
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.
Whole cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma to the syrup.
Ginger root
Adds pungent aroma to the syrup and is removed before canning.

The step that matters

Remove the ginger root before canning. The ginger root keeps flavouring the syrup while it cooks, so leaving it in would change the flavour of the finished jars.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cassia, clove, ginger):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cassia, clove, ginger. 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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