Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Preserves

A method for preserving pineapples in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Twist off the top and bottom of the pineapples and remove the rough skin.

  2. Weigh the pineapples and cut them into slices, chips, or quarters.

Cook the fruit

  1. For each pound of fruit, add ½ cup of water to a preserving kettle and bring to a gentle boil until the fruit is tender and clear.

  2. Remove the fruit using a fork or skimmer and place it in a dish.

  3. In the remaining water, add 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit and stir until dissolved.

  4. Add the pineapple back to the kettle, cover, and boil gently until transparent.

  5. Remove the fruit.

Make the syrup and jar

  1. Let it cool.

  2. Transfer it to glass jars.

  3. Simmer the syrup until thick and rich.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit.

  5. Seal the jars the next day.

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. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapples
The main fruit, which provides the flavour and the bulk of the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens, helps set the syrup and preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Simmering the fruit until transparent. Boiling gently keeps the pineapple pieces intact while sugar slowly replaces the water in the fruit, so it turns clear. Boiling hard can break the pieces apart and make the syrup cloudy.

“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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes