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Dessert

Pineapple Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, sugar, vanilla, and grated pineapple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the base

  1. Scald the cream with the sugar in a saucepan and let it cool.

  2. Add the vanilla to the cooled mixture and freeze.

Add the pineapple

  1. When the mixture is half frozen, add the grated pineapple that has been sprinkled with sugar and allowed to stand for 30 minutes.

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. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Thin cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruit flavor and acidity, along with moisture that can form ice crystals.

The step that matters

Adding the pineapple at half frozen. Adding fruit to a fully frozen base leaves it hard to mix evenly. Adding it when half frozen lets the pineapple distribute through the cream while the mixture is still soft enough to fold in, and the sugared fruit stands first so its juices are drawn out and sweetened.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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