Name: Iced Pineapple
Ingredients: 1 ripe pineapple; 2 tablespoons powdered sugar; ⅓ cup sherry

Why it works: Pineapple and sherry work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Iced Pineapple

Ingredients

1 ripe pineapple
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
⅓ cup sherry

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

Hold the pineapple by the crown over a large dish.
Using a sharp knife, remove the skin and eyes.
Grate the pineapple off the core into the dish using a clean, large tin grater.

Sweeten, soak and chill

Dust the grated pineapple with powdered sugar.
Pour sherry over the pineapple.
Chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Serve very cold.

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 + sherrytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together228 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,841 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,141 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Provides the main body, juice and fresh tropical flavour of the dish.
Powdered sugar: Adds sweetness and dissolves into the pineapple juice.
Sherry: Adds aroma and a fortified wine flavour to the fruit.