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Dessert

Pineapple Pie

A pie filled with diced fresh pineapple, sweetened, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Sweeten the diced fresh pineapple and place it in a baked pie crust.

  2. Cover with whipped cream and serve immediately.

Canned pineapple variation

  1. If using canned pineapple, reheat it and add 1 teaspoon of butter.

  2. Thicken the mixture with cornstarch, then place it in a baked pie crust.

Cool and top

  1. Cool before spreading the whipped cream on top.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pineapple + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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

Fresh pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and bulk of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and balances its natural tartness.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, creamy topping that softens the fruit's acidity.
Cornstarch
Thickens the pineapple juices so the filling holds its shape when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder flavour to the canned pineapple.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cornstarch. Cornstarch only thickens when the liquid is heated to a simmer, and the filling firms further as it cools. Adding it without heating leaves the juices runny, so the pie will not hold a clean slice.

Swap the pineapple

The recipe marks pineapple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter. 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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