Name: Timbale De Fruits, Oranges Et Ananas
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; 1 cup granulated sugar; 4 large eggs; ⅓ cup melted butter; Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 cup diced pineapple, cooked in syrup; Royal icing (made with egg whites and sifted sugar); Apricot marmalade

Why it works: Pineapple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Timbale De Fruits, Oranges Et Ananas

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
⅓ cup melted butter
Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
1 cup diced pineapple, cooked in syrup
Royal icing (made with egg whites and sifted sugar)
Apricot marmalade

Directions

In a mixing bowl, combine flour and sugar.
Add eggs and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes.
Stir in melted butter.
Grease a small cake pan and a medium baking sheet.
Spread the batter in the small pan to a thickness of ½ inch, and pour the remaining batter onto the baking sheet.
Bake until lightly golden.
Cut a circle from the baked cake to fit the bottom of a mold.
Trim the cake to the height of the mold.
Place the cake in the mold and seal it with royal icing.
Prepare orange jelly as directed in the orange jelly recipe.
Add diced pineapple to the jelly.
Pour the jelly into the mold and let it set in a shallow dish.
Once it is partially set, fill the mold and chill for 2 hours.
Unmold and glaze the timbale with apricot marmalade before serving.

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.

Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together377 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,458 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, butter, syrup, apricot):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, butter, syrup, apricot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.