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Pickled Pine-apples

A preserved pineapple dish made with sugar, vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon, then boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pickled Pine-apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer the peeled and sliced pineapples in a jar with the cloves and cinnamon.

  2. Pour the scalded vinegar and sugar over the fruit.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour off the liquid.

  2. Boil it for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour it over the fruit again.

  4. Let it stand for another 24 hours.

Cook and seal

  1. Gently boil the fruit and syrup together for 1 hour.

  2. Seal the mixture in jars.

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. Pineapple + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Pineapple + vinegartop 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

Pineapples
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the sweet, spiced syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavor and helps preserve it.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Pouring off and reheating the syrup. Heating the vinegar and sugar syrup and pouring it back over the fruit lets the syrup penetrate and flavor the pineapple. Boiling the syrup briefly before reuse helps it dissolve sugar fully and keeps the pickle stable for sealing.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, 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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