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Pineapple Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling 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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the top and bottom of the pineapples and peel off the rough skin.

  2. Cut the pineapples into slices, chips, or quarters, or shape them like whole pineapples.

Cook the fruit

  1. Add ½ cup of water to a preserving kettle for each pound of fruit.

  2. Bring the water to a gentle boil until the fruit is tender and clear.

  3. Remove the pineapple pieces using a fork or skimmer.

  4. Place the pineapple pieces in a dish.

  5. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit to the remaining water.

  6. Stir the sugar until dissolved.

  7. Add the pineapple back to the kettle.

  8. Cover the kettle.

  9. Boil gently until the mixture is transparent throughout.

Pack and seal

  1. Remove the pineapple from the kettle.

  2. Let the pineapple cool.

  3. Place the cooled pineapple in glass jars.

  4. Simmer the syrup until it becomes thick and rich.

  5. Pour the syrup over the fruit in the jars.

  6. Secure the jars the next day.

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 fruit, whose tender texture and flavor become the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, by thickening the syrup, helps preserve it and give it body.

The step that matters

Simmer the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration determines both set and shelf life. Syrup that is not cooked down enough stays thin and may let the fruit spoil sooner.

“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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