Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Preserves

A preserved pineapple product made by boiling fruit with sugar and storing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pineapple Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash the pineapples thoroughly.

  2. Place the pineapples in a large kettle filled with cold water.

  3. Boil the pineapples until a broom straw can penetrate between the sections.

  4. Remove the pineapples from the kettle.

  5. Let the pineapples cool.

  6. Cut the pineapples into slices ½ inch thick.

  7. Remove the rind from the slices.

  8. Extract the cores from the slices.

  9. Weigh the sliced fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. Use an equal amount of sugar (1 pound of sugar for every pound of fruit).

  2. In a pan, create layers of sugar and fruit, starting with sugar.

  3. Let the layers stand for 12 hours.

  4. Drain the slices.

  5. Boil the syrup until scum ceases to rise.

  6. Drop the fruit into the syrup.

  7. Cook slowly for 15 to 20 minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Transfer the fruit into hot jars.

  2. Cover with syrup to overflowing.

  3. Seal with sterilized covers.

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 + sugartop 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

Pineapples
Supplies the fruit body, flavor and aroma that the preserve is built around.
Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit to form a thick syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the pineapples until a broom straw can penetrate. This test shows the fruit is tender enough to cook through without staying tough in the centre. Boiling too long makes the slices soft and likely to fall apart later in the syrup.

“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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes