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Dessert

Pineapple or Quince Honey

A syrup made by boiling sugar, water, grated pineapple or quince, alum, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pineapple or Quince Honey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water and sugar together to make a syrup.

  2. Add the grated quinces or pineapples and the piece of alum.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the cream of tartar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + quincetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Quince + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together203 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup and provides the sweetness and body of the honey.
Quinces or pineapples
Supply the fruit flavour and aroma that define the honey.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the syrup smooth and prevents crystallisation.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup and draws flavour from the fruit. Boiling too briefly leaves the syrup thin, while overboiling can darken it or make it too thick once cooled.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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