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Dessert

Pineapple Sorbet

A frozen dessert made from pineapple, sugar, citrus juices, rind, maraschino liqueur, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pineapple Sorbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a bowl, combine the pineapple pieces and sugar, and beat well together.

  2. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, grated lemon rind, grated orange rind, maraschino, and water.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Freeze

  1. Freeze until it reaches a semi-liquid consistency.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 main fruit flavor and body, with pieces beaten with sugar to release juice.
Sugar
Sweetens the sorbet and lowers the freezing point so it stays scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and flavor, and a little alcohol keeps the sorbet softer when frozen.

The step that matters

Freeze until semi-liquid. Stopping at a semi-liquid stage keeps the texture light. Freezing fully makes large ice crystals and a hard, icy result, so the mixture must be checked during freezing.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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