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Dessert

Pineapple Pie

Pineapple pie with apple sauce glaze and pastry strips, baked and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Spread the apple sauce over the pie crust to glaze it.

  3. Fill the pie plate with the prepared pineapple.

  4. Arrange strips of pastry across the top.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C), then reduce to 350°F (175°C) and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and dust with powdered sugar.

  3. Return to the oven briefly to melt the sugar.

  4. Serve cold.

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 + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pineapple + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Pineapple
Provides the filling's main body, sweetness and fruity aroma.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp base.
Apple sauce
Brushed under the crust to add moisture and help the pastry brown.
Powdered sugar
Dusted on top and melted briefly to give a sweet, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Glazing the crust with apple sauce. A thin layer of apple sauce keeps the pastry from soaking up pineapple juice, so the base stays crisp rather than soggy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sauce, sugar. 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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