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Drink

Pine Apple Ice

A frozen pineapple beverage made by boiling sugar water, adding pineapple and lemon juice, then freezing with ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and pineapple 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 ↓

Pine Apple Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 4 cups water and 2 cups sugar in a pot to make a syrup.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes.

Combine and freeze

  1. Remove from heat and stir in grated pineapple and lemon juice.

  2. Allow mixture to cool, then add 4 cups ice water.

  3. Freeze mixture until mushy, using a combination of half ice and half salt.

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. Lemon + pineappletop 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. Sugar + pineappletop 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

Sugar
Sweetens the ice and lowers its freezing point so it stays soft and scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the pineapple flavor and balances the sweetness.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and body of the ice.

The step that matters

Freeze until mushy, not solid. Sugar keeps the mixture from freezing hard, so it should be checked as it chills. Freezing it fully solid makes it icy and difficult to spoon, while stopping at a mushy stage keeps it smooth and scoopable.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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