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Pineapple Pickle

A sweet pickled pineapple made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and pineapple cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pineapple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar and sugar together in a pot.

  2. Add the whole cloves and broken cinnamon stick.

Cook and bottle

  1. Stir in the pineapple cubes.

  2. Boil until the pineapple is tender but not broken.

  3. Bottle and seal while hot.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + pineappletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Clove + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vinegar + pineappletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup, balancing the vinegar's sharpness.
Whole cloves
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon stick
Contributes a sweet, warm aroma that infuses into the syrup.
Pineapple
Forms the main body of the pickle, softening as it simmers in the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the pineapple is tender but not broken. Heat softens the pineapple's cell walls, so it turns tender while simmering. Boiling too long breaks the cubes down into mush, while stopping too early leaves them firm and raw-tasting.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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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