Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Sauce

A sweet pineapple sauce made with corn starch, sugar, pineapple, and water, served warm with steamed pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and pineapple work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 150 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve corn starch in a little water.

  2. Chop enough pineapple to make 1 cup.

  3. Combine pineapple, sugar, and water in a small saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour boiling water over the corn starch and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Cook the mixture until thick and syrupy.

  3. Add the pineapple mixture to the corn starch mixture and stir until clear and white.

  4. Serve warm, great with steamed pudding.

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. Corn + pineappletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a glossy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the syrup reach a thick, syrupy consistency.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and acidity that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the pineapple mixture to the corn starch mixture. Corn starch thickens only when heated with liquid and stirred, so the sauce should be stirred steadily until it turns clear and thick. Stopping early leaves it cloudy and loose.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipes