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Dessert

Sweet Pickled Pineapple

A preserved pineapple dish made with sugar, vinegar, mace, cloves, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Pickled Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Combine pineapple and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture sit until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a kettle.

  4. Cook until the pineapple is tender.

  5. Remove the pineapple from the kettle.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Add vinegar, mace, cloves, and allspice to the syrup.

  2. Cook the syrup until it thickens.

  3. Return the pineapple to the kettle.

  4. Boil everything together for 30 minutes.

Jar

  1. Pour the contents into jars.

  2. Seal the jars while hot.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Pineapple + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the fruit body and tender texture, and its sugars add sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves, builds the thick syrup that preserves it.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Seal the jars while hot. Filling and sealing with hot contents helps drive air out of the jars and keeps the seal forming as they cool, which protects the pickle from spoilage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, vinegar, clove, allspice. 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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