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 ↓
Preserved Pine-apple
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pineapple
Peel and slice the pineapple, removing the core.
Weigh the pineapple and use an equal weight of sugar.
Make the syrup
Layer the pineapple and sugar in a kettle, adding 1 cup of water for each pound of sugar.
Heat the mixture to a boil.
Remove the pineapple and spread it on dishes in the sun.
Boil the syrup for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.
Return the pineapple to the kettle and boil for 15 minutes.
Pack and seal
Pack the pineapple into wide-mouth jars and pour the hot syrup over it.
Cover the jars to retain heat, and once cool, seal with branded tissue paper.
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.
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Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Forms the preserved fruit itself, providing the texture and flavor that the syrup surrounds.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, draws water out to help preserve it.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that the pineapple cooks and soaks in.
The step that matters
Boil the syrup for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup so it can preserve the fruit, and skimming removes foam that would otherwise cloud the syrup and can carry spoilage. Keeping the syrup at a full boil for the full time matters for the preserve to keep well.
“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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