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Dessert

Pineapple Filled Coconut Bars

Bars made with coconut, brown sugar, butter, salt, and pineapple, baked and cut into pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pineapple Filled Coconut Bars

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter, salt, brown sugar, and coconut until well combined.

  3. Press half of the mixture into a baking pan.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the pineapple evenly over the pressed mixture.

  2. Cover with the remaining coconut mixture and press firmly.

  3. Bake for 35 minutes.

  4. Cut into bars after cooling.

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. Coconut + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

  2. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Butter + pineappletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 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

Butter or margarine
Adds fat that makes the base rich and helps it hold together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses helps the bars brown and turn chewy.
Coconut
Forms the bulk of the layers and gives the bars their chewy texture and toasted flavour.
Pineapple
Adds moisture and fruity acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and coconut.

The step that matters

Press the layers firmly. Firm pressing packs the mixture into a dense, cohesive base and top so the bars hold their shape when cut. Loose layers tend to crumble and bake unevenly.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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