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Pineapple Sauce

A sauce made from butter, sugar, and pineapple.

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

Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the uncooked version

  1. Mix the butter and sugar together.

  2. Flavor with pineapple or another flavoring.

  3. Form a pyramid shape with the mixture using a teaspoon.

Make the cooked version

  1. For a cooked version, 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.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + pineappletop 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds body when boiled with the pineapple.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and a bright acidity.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing in the sugar. Adding the sugar a little at a time while the pineapple is cooking helps it dissolve evenly. Adding it all at once can leave grains and uneven sweetness in the sauce.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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