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Pineapple and Cocoanut Preserves

A preserve made from grated pineapple, grated coconut, and sugar boiled into syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pineapple and Cocoanut Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Grate 1 pound of pineapple.

  2. Add ½ pound of grated coconut to the pineapple.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar with a little water and leftover pineapple juice in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture three times to create syrup.

  3. Add a spoonful of cold water, let stand briefly, and skim foam.

  4. Boil the syrup again three times and skim again.

Cook and set

  1. Add the fruit mixture, stir with a wooden spoon until the bottom of the kettle is visible.

  2. Pour into a dish and let cool.

  3. Cut into squares if desired and allow to dry.

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 + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and bulk of the preserve, with juice that helps form the syrup.
Coconut
Adds body and a rich, chewy texture as its moisture cooks into the sweet mass.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled into syrup, helps it thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Stirring the fruit into the syrup. Sugar syrup and fruit must be cooked until the mass thickens and the pot bottom shows clearly during stirring. Stopping early leaves the preserve runny, while overcooking can make it hard and sticky once cooled.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, 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.

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