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Pineapple Drink

A chilled pineapple and lemon beverage sweetened with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and remove the eyes from the pineapple, then grate it.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, boil 4 cups of sugar and 2 cups of water for 5 minutes to make a syrup.

Combine and chill

  1. Add the grated pineapple and lemon juice to the syrup.

  2. When the mixture is cold, add 1 quart of water.

  3. Chill thoroughly 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Pineapple + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 main fruit flavor and aroma, and its juice adds moisture to the drink.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup and brightens the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and, dissolved into water, forms the syrup base.

The step that matters

Cooling the syrup before adding water. Adding the diluting water while the syrup and fruit mixture is still hot can dull the fresh flavors and change the balance of the drink. Letting it cool fully first keeps the flavor bright and the sweetness even before the drink is chilled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, syrup. 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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