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Pine-apple Marmalade

A preserved pineapple sweet made by boiling fruit with sugar in stages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pine-apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

  1. Combine the pineapple pieces with one third of the sugar and let it sit overnight to extract the juice.

Boil and rest

  1. The next day, boil the mixture for a short time.

  2. Let it stand for two to three days.

  3. Repeat the boiling process with another third of the sugar.

  4. Let it stand again for one to two days.

Finish

  1. Finally, boil the mixture with the remaining sugar until clear.

  2. Add lemon juice for a pleasant acidity, if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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 fruit base and its juice, which dissolves the sugar during macerating.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils down, thickens it and helps it set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Resting between boils. Sugar is added in thirds and the mixture rests between boils so the fruit can soften and release its juice. Boiling too early or too long can scorch the sugar or toughen the fruit, so each boil should be short.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar. 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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