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Dessert

Frozen Pineapple

A frozen dessert made by mixing grated pineapple, sugar, lemon juice, and cold water, then freezing until thick and creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Frozen Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pineapple, removing all pits and tough sections.

  2. Grate the pineapple into a large dish, avoiding the stringy fiber around the core.

Make the mixture

  1. Add 1½ pounds of sugar, the juice of one lemon, and 3 pints of cold water.

  2. Mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until it is white, thick, and soft, like cream ice.

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
Supplies the main fruit flavor and the grated pulp that gives the ice its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice soft and scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the pineapple flavor.

The step that matters

Freezing until white, thick, and soft. Sugar lowers the freezing point, so the mixture stays soft rather than turning solid. Freezing too long makes it hard and icy, so it should be checked as it sets.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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