Name: Sweet Pickles — Pineapple
Ingredients: 1 pineapple, sliced and cut into small pieces; 2 pounds sugar; 1 pint vinegar; 1 heaping teaspoon ground cinnamon; 1 heaping teaspoon ground mace; ½ teaspoon ground cloves; 1 piece of ginger

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Pickles — Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

Place the sliced pineapple in a large stoneware dish.
In a saucepan, combine sugar and vinegar, then spice with cinnamon, mace, cloves, and ginger.
Heat the syrup until hot, then pour it over the pineapple.

Steep and repeat

Let the mixture stand overnight.
Pour off the syrup and heat it again.
Repeat pouring the hot syrup over the pineapple for four consecutive days.
After the last day, store the pickles in jars.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Provides the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced syrup as the pickle forms.
Sugar: Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickled fruit.
Ground cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, ginger):

Allspicefits better
Cardamomfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, ginger. 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.