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Dessert

Pineapple, or Orange Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, sweet milk, baking soda and topped with grated pineapple or orange and a fruit‑juice 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.

Prepare 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. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the sweet milk.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into jelly-cake tins, filling them four or five deep.

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

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

  4. Spread the icing on the 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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for a light structure and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acts with the baking soda to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Alternating the dry ingredients with the sweet milk. Adding the flour mixture in portions alongside the milk keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified. Adding it all at once can overmix the flour, developing gluten and making the cake tough.

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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