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Orange Compote with Pineapple

A fruit compote of sliced pineapple and oranges simmered in a sweet syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Compote with Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the pineapple and oranges.

  2. Layer them alternately in a dish.

Make the syrup and serve

  1. Boil the syrup from the pineapple with sugar and pour it over the layered fruit.

  2. If not sweet enough, add more sugar when cold.

  3. For flavor, add a dash of lemon juice and optional rum or brandy.

  4. For a thicker syrup, add more sugar and boil it fast.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Rum + bananatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Supplies the fruit and the syrup that flavours the compote.
Sweet oranges
Provide the main fruit body and bright citrus flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, when boiled longer, thickens it.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup with sugar. Sugar dissolves into the pineapple juice and concentrates as it boils, so the syrup thickens. Adding sugar too early or boiling too hard can make it sticky or cause it to darken. Taste when cold, since sweetness seems weaker once chilled.

Swap the banana

The recipe marks banana as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, orange, sugar, rum, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, sugar, rum, 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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