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Pine-apple Water Ice

A frozen dessert made from pineapple, water, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pine-apple Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the pineapple in a mortar.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the pineapple, water, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and freeze

  1. Strain the mixture into a basin and add the lemon juice.

  2. Let it cool, then freeze.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provides the main flavour and the fruit base of the ice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once dissolved, lowers the freezing point so the ice stays softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the pineapple flavour.

The step that matters

Let it cool, then freeze. Freezing a hot or warm mixture slows the process and can give larger ice crystals. Cooling it fully first lets the sugar syrup set to a smoother, finer texture.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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