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Pineapple Pickle

A sweet and tangy pickled pineapple made with vinegar, brown sugar, spices, and pineapple pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pineapple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine vinegar, brown sugar, whole cloves, and whole peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add pineapple pieces.

  4. Boil until the fruit turns golden yellow.

  5. Boil the syrup down until it is rich.

  6. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

  7. Add cinnamon and cloves tied in cloth for spicing.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pineapple + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Clove + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vinegar + pineappletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and preserves the fruit.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the pickle and thickens into a rich syrup as it boils down.
Pineapple
Forms the fruit base, turning golden as its sugars caramelize during boiling.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the syrup.
Whole peppercorns
Adds mild pungent spice that deepens the flavour of the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down until it is rich. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and vinegar, so it thickens and coats the fruit. Stopping too early leaves a thin, watery pickle that may spoil sooner.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pineapple, cinnamon. 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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