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Pineapple, Brandied

A preserved pineapple made by layering fruit with powdered sugar and soaking in brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 298 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pineapple, Brandied

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, trim, and slice the pineapple.

  2. Weigh the fruit and use 1 pound of powdered sugar for each pound of fruit.

Pack and store

  1. Fill glass jars with alternate layers of sugar and pineapple, ensuring the top and bottom layers are sugar.

  2. Pour in enough brandy to cover the slices.

  3. Seal the jars tightly and store in a cool, dry, dark place.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Pineapple
Provides the fruit that softens and flavors the brandy as it macerates.
Powdered sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and dissolves into a syrup, preserving the pineapple.
Brandy
Covers the fruit and acts as a preservative, with alcohol inhibiting spoilage.

The step that matters

Layering the sugar and fruit. Sugar must sit on the top and bottom layers and be spread between the fruit so the slices stay fully coated. Sugar draws water out of the fruit through osmosis, and even coverage helps the syrup form evenly and keeps exposed pineapple from spoiling.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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