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Pineapple Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking sliced pineapple with sugar and water until the mixture becomes a clear syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pineapple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pineapple into thick slices, ensuring none of the fruit is wasted.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve ½ cup of water with a portion of the sugar in a preserving pan.

  2. Once melted, gradually add the remaining sugar and boil until it forms a clear syrup, skimming as needed.

Cook and store

  1. Add the pineapple slices and boil for 30 minutes or until the mixture is very transparent.

  2. Transfer to pots, cover when cool, and store in a dry place.

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 + 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

Pineapple
Provides the fruit body and flavour of the preserve, and its texture softens as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it dissolves and boils, thickens it and helps it keep.

The step that matters

Boiling the pineapple in the syrup until very transparent. Sugar must dissolve fully before the fruit is added, and the fruit needs enough boiling to absorb syrup and turn clear. Undercooking leaves the preserve runny and cloudy, while overcooking can make it dark and stiff.

“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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