Name: Pine-apples
Ingredients: 1 pineapple; sugar; sponge cake slices or ladyfingers

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 ↓

Pine-apples

Ingredients

1 pineapple
sugar
sponge cake slices or ladyfingers

Directions

Prepare

Cut the pineapple into dice.
Saturate the diced pineapple with sugar.

Assemble

Pile the sweetened pineapple in the center of a glass dish.
Arrange sponge cake slices or ladyfingers around the sides of the dish.

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 + 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

Pineapple: Provides the fruit base and tart, juicy flavor that contrasts with the sweet cake.
Sugar: Draws juice out of the diced pineapple and sweetens the fruit.
Sponge cake or ladyfingers: Forms the absorbent structure around the sides that soaks up juices and holds the trifle shape.

“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.