Skip to main content
Dessert

Pine-apple Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, sugar, pineapple, and optional egg white, simmered or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pine-apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Mix the butter and sugar together.

  2. If desired, add the egg white.

  3. Flavor with pineapple or another flavoring.

Shape

  1. Form the mixture into a pyramid shape and use a teaspoon to shape it like a pineapple.

Cook the pineapple and serve

  1. Add a little water to the grated pineapple and simmer until tender.

  2. Gradually mix in half the weight of the pineapple in sugar and boil gently for five minutes.

  3. Serve the sauce.

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. Butter + pineappletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fat-based body to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps thicken it as it boils.
Egg white
Adds structure and body to the mixture when included.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and acidity.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the sugar. Adding sugar slowly while the pineapple is cooking helps it dissolve evenly without clumping. Boiling gently rather than hard keeps the sauce from scorching and lets it thicken smoothly as the sugar concentrates.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg. 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.

You might also like

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