Name: Sugared Pineapple
Ingredients: ripe pineapples; 1¼ cups crushed sugar for each pound of fruit

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 ↓

Sugared Pineapple

Ingredients

ripe pineapples
1¼ cups crushed sugar for each pound of fruit

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Peel and slice the pineapples into ½‑inch thick slices, removing the brown circles with a small, sharp knife.
Weigh the peeled fruit and measure 1¼ cups of crushed sugar for each pound of fruit.

Layer and store

Roll the sugar until it is fine.
Layer the pineapple and sugar in glass jars, using plenty of sugar.
Seal the jars air‑tight and store them in a cool place until needed.

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.

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

Ripe pineapples: Provide the fruit that is preserved, releasing juice that dissolves the sugar.
Sugar: Draws out moisture and preserves the fruit, giving it sweetness and body.

“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.