Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Pine-apple Preserve
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the peel from the pineapples, cutting deeply to remove all seeds and eyes.
Cut each pineapple into six slices and layer them in a preserving pan.
Sprinkle sugar over each layer, adding a few cinnamon sticks and bay leaves, with more sugar on top.
Simmer over medium heat until the sugar melts, then reduce heat and simmer until the pineapples change color and become tender.
Remove the fruit to a colander to drain, but continue boiling the syrup until it thickens.
Return the fruit to the syrup and finish boiling.
Bottle the preserve when cool, checking the syrup every few days for fermentation.
If fermentation occurs, remove the syrup, reboil it, and return the fruit only when boiling is nearly finished.
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.
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Pineapple + cinnamontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together549 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
-
Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,841 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Swap the pineapple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Pineapplethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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