Name: Canned Pineapple
Ingredients: shredded pineapple; sugar; water

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 ↓

Canned Pineapple

Ingredients

shredded pineapple
sugar
water

Directions

Prepare

In a crock, layer equal amounts of shredded pineapple and sugar alternately.
Let the mixture stand overnight.
In the morning, drain off the juice.

Cook and seal

For every 3 cups of juice, add 1 cup of water.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Add the pulp of the pineapple and let it boil briefly.
Seal the mixture in self-sealing 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.

Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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: Provides the fruit base, flavour and most of the bulk of the preserve.
Sugar: Draws out juice from the fruit and adds sweetness that helps preserve the mixture.
Water: Dilutes the drained juice so the syrup is thinned before boiling.

“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.