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Pineapple Preserve

A sweet preserve made by cooking sliced pineapple with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare the pineapples and slice them into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Remove the eyes and core from the slices.

  3. Cut the slices into small squares or pointed pieces, or grate the pineapple if preferred.

Macerate

  1. In a large crock or basin, layer sugar and fruit, starting with sugar at the bottom.

  2. Let the mixture sit in a cool place for 12 to 15 hours.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the mixture over a clear hot fire for 30 minutes until the fruit and syrup are clear, skimming off any scum that forms.

  2. Transfer the preserve into small jars.

  3. Boil the eyes and cores in a pint of water, then strain the liquid.

  4. Add the juice to the fruit before boiling for extra syrup.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapples
Provide the main fruit bulk and the tart-sweet pineapple flavor.
White sugar
Draws juice out of the fruit and, when boiled down, thickens the syrup and sweetens the preserve.

The step that matters

Boiling until the fruit and syrup turn clear. As water evaporates, the sugar concentration rises and the syrup thickens and sets as it cools. Stopping too early leaves the preserve runny, while boiling too long can make it hard and overly dark.

“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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