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Pineapple Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling pineapple with sugar and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pineapple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and slice the pineapples into thin quarters, removing all skin.

  2. Weigh the fruit and use an equal amount of sugar (1 pound of sugar for 1 pound of fruit).

  3. Layer the pineapple and sugar in a large earthen dish, finishing with a layer of sugar on top.

  4. Let the mixture sit overnight to draw out the juice.

Make the syrup

  1. In the morning, drain the juice into a preserving kettle.

  2. Stir in the egg white and skim off any foam as it comes to a boil.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, then pour the hot syrup over the pineapple.

Cool and jar

  1. Cover and let it cool completely, then transfer to glass jars and seal.

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. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pineapple + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 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

Ripe pineapples
Provide the fruit that becomes the preserve, with its juice drawn out by sugar.
Sugar
Draws out juice and preserves the fruit, adding sweetness and thickening the syrup.
Egg white
Binds impurities into foam that can be skimmed off, clarifying the syrup.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam as the syrup comes to a boil. Egg white coagulates and carries impurities to the surface as foam. Skimming it as it rises keeps the syrup clear; leaving it in can cloud the preserve and add off flavors.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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