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Dessert

Pineapple Honey

A sweet syrup made from sugar, water, grated pineapple, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Honey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a kettle, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the grated pineapples and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the piece of alum and mix well.

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 + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and body, thickening the syrup as the water cooks off.
Grated pineapples
Supply the fruit flavor and pulp that give the honey its character.
Alum
Firms the fruit texture during long cooking.

The step that matters

Stir in the alum and mix well. A small piece of alum must be fully stirred through the hot mixture so it disperses evenly; unmixed pieces can leave firm spots or uneven texture in the finished product.

Swap the cherry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple. 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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