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Dessert

Pineapple, or Orange Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk, baking soda, and tartar, topped with grated pineapple or orange and fruit icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pineapple, or Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda, mixing until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake tins, filling them four or five deep.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Prepare a thick icing flavored with the juice of the fruit and a little tartaric acid.

  3. Spread the icing thickly on the cooled cakes and top with grated pineapple or orange.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidic leavening partner that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a light crumb.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter into the tins. Leavening starts as soon as the acid and baking soda meet, so the batter should be baked promptly. Filling the tins too deep can leave the centre underbaked, so check doneness with a toothpick.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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