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Preserved Pineapples

A method for preserving pineapples by boiling with sugar and optional lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Preserved Pineapples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapples

  1. Peel the pineapples and remove the eyes and hard center.

  2. Slice the pineapples and boil them until tender.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Skim the liquid and add ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of pineapple.

  2. Boil the mixture, skim again, and add the fruit.

  3. Boil until the mixture is clear, or add lemon and 1 pound of sugar if desired.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Pineapples
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in quantity, helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is clear. Sugar must be dissolved and the fruit cooked long enough to absorb syrup; stopping early leaves the fruit opaque and less well preserved.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, 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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