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Pineapple, Bottled

Preserves ripe pineapples in syrup and bottles them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, Bottled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Ensure the pineapples are perfectly sound and ripe.

  2. Peel and remove any specks.

  3. Cut the fruit into 1/2-inch thick slices and divide the slices into halves.

  4. Place the pineapple halves into dry wide-mouthed bottles.

  5. Wrap a wisp of hay around each bottle.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water to make the syrup.

  2. Stir in the egg white.

  3. Heat the syrup for 2-3 minutes and allow it to boil.

  4. Skim the syrup carefully.

  5. Add a spoonful of cold water to help the scum rise.

  6. Strain the syrup through a napkin before using.

Bottle and process

  1. Cover the pineapple halves with syrup.

  2. Arrange the bottles side by side in a boiler, with cold water up to their necks.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Let it boil gently for 20 minutes.

  5. Remove the pan from heat.

  6. Cork the bottles.

  7. Let the bottles cool completely.

  8. Wax the corks.

  9. Store the bottles in a cool cellar.

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).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 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

Ripe pineapples
Provide the fruit, whose flesh softens and becomes sweet during gentle cooking in syrup.
Loaf sugar
Makes the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they rise as scum to be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup carefully. Egg white clarifies the syrup as it heats: impurities bind to the coagulating protein and rise as scum. Skimming thoroughly leaves a clear syrup and a cleaner-looking preserved fruit.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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