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Pinkapplk Pickles

A pickled pineapple preserved in a sweet and vinegar brine with cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pinkapplk Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spice bag

  1. Tie the cloves and cinnamon in a spice bag.

Pickle over three days

  1. Place the pineapple in a deep bowl.

  2. Boil the sugar, cider vinegar, and spice bag for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pineapple.

  4. Let the pineapple stand for 1 day.

  5. Pour off the liquid.

  6. Boil the liquid again for 3 minutes.

  7. Return the boiled liquid to the pineapple.

  8. On the third day, boil everything together for 30 minutes over low heat.

  9. Bottle the pickles while hot.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pineapple + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Pineapple + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Forms the body of the pickles and absorbs the sweet, spiced syrup over the standing days.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the fruit.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Whole cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor carried into the syrup from the spice bag.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the liquid and returning it over the days. Repeated boiling of the syrup and pouring it back over the fruit lets sugar and spice penetrate the pineapple while the acidic syrup keeps it preserved. Skipping or shortening the boils weakens both flavor and preservation.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cider, vinegar, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, clove, cinnamon. 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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