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Pine-apple Pickle

A pickled pineapple preserved in a spiced sugar and vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Pine-apple Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the pineapple very thin.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with sugar and vinegar, adding the spices.

  2. Pour the syrup over the pineapple and let it sit overnight.

Drain and repeat

  1. Drain the syrup.

  2. Boil it again.

  3. Pour it over the fruit.

  4. Repeat this process twice more.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pineapple + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Pineapple
Provides the fruit that is softened and flavoured by the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Cloves, cinnamon, allspice
Add warm aromatic flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeating the drain, boil and pour cycle. Boiling the syrup again and pouring it back over the fruit repeats the heating and soaking that draws flavour into the pineapple. Skipping a round leaves the fruit less infused and less preserved.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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