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Dessert

Pine-apple Cardinal

A preserved pineapple soaked in sugar, sherry, Rhenish wine, and champagne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and champagne share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pine-apple Cardinal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pineapple into slices.

  2. Place the slices in a deep bowl and add the sugar.

  3. Let it sit for three hours.

Macerate and serve

  1. Pour the sherry, Rhenish wine, and champagne over the pineapple.

  2. Allow it to stand for a short time before serving.

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. Sherry + champagnetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + champagnetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Wine + champagnetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 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
Provides the fruit base that absorbs the sugar and wines and gives the dish its flavor.
Fine sugar
Draws juice out of the pineapple and sweetens the liquid it soaks in.
Sherry
Adds a dry, nutty, fortified wine flavor to the soaking liquid.
Rhenish wine
Contributes light fruity acidity and body to the soaking liquid.
Champagne
Adds sparkling acidity and aroma to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Letting the pineapple sit with the sugar. Sugar pulls water out of the fruit by osmosis, so the juice forms and mixes with the sugar. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the fruit dry and the syrup weak, and the wines will not be sweetened or flavored evenly.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Pineapplethe original
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, wine, champagne. 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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