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Pine-apples

A preserve made by boiling pineapple with water, sugar, lemon, and pineapple peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pine-apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Remove the top and bottom of the pineapple and peel the outside.

  2. In a well-tinned saucepan, combine water, sugar, lemon slices, and pineapple peeling.

  3. Boil for about 5 minutes, then strain the syrup.

Cook the preserve

  1. Cut the pineapple into thin slices and add to the strained syrup in the saucepan.

  2. Boil until the pineapple is easily pricked with a sharp skewer.

  3. Store the preserve 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. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Pineapple
Provides the fruit that becomes tender and sets into the preserve.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and forms the syrup the fruit cooks in.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.

The step that matters

Boil until the pineapple is easily pricked with a sharp skewer. Stopping too early leaves the fruit firm and the syrup thin, while overcooking toughens the fruit and can darken it. The skewer test shows when the fruit has softened through without breaking down.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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