Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Canned Pineapple
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Make syrup by boiling sugar and water for 5 minutes.
Skim or strain the syrup if necessary.
Pack and seal
Add the pineapple to the syrup and bring to a boil.
Prepare hot cans, fill them with the mixture, and seal immediately.
As the cans cool, tighten the seals.
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.
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Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Pineapple
- Provides the fruit that is preserved and packed in the syrup.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit in the sealed cans.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that covers the pineapple.
The step that matters
Sealing the cans immediately while hot. Filling hot cans and sealing right away lets the contents heat the headspace so a vacuum forms as it cools. A poor seal lets air and microbes in, so the fruit can spoil.
“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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