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Pineapple Sauce

A sweet pineapple sauce made by reducing sugar and water into a syrup, then adding pineapple juice and maraschino cherry juice to a pint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 537 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Sauce

1 pint

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan to make a heavy syrup.

  2. Cook until the syrup reaches a hair consistency.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the syrup and add the juice from the pineapple.

  2. Stir in maraschino cherry juice until the total volume is 1 pint.

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 + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup, providing sweetness and body that thickens as the water cooks off.
Pineapple juice
Adds fresh fruit flavour and most of the liquid volume to the sauce.
Maraschino cherry juice
Adds fruity, sweet flavour and brings the sauce up to its final volume.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to hair consistency. As water evaporates, the sugar concentration rises and the syrup thickens, so the stopping point decides how thick the sauce will be once cooled. Cooking too far makes it stiff and sticky, while stopping early leaves it thin.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple. 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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