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Dessert

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

A baked dessert with pineapple slices and cherries on top, covered by a buttery cake batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla 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 Upside Down Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Sift flour once, measure, then add baking powder, salt, and sugar; sift together three times.

  2. Add butter to the flour mixture.

  3. Combine egg, milk, and vanilla; add to the flour mixture, stirring until all flour is dampened.

  4. Beat the mixture vigorously.

Make the topping

  1. Melt 6 tablespoons of butter over low heat; add brown sugar and pineapple juice, cooking and stirring until thick.

  2. Add the 7 slices of pineapple to the mixture and place a cherry in the center of each slice.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the cake batter over the pineapple mixture and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until done.

  2. Turn the cake upside down on a dish with the pineapple on top.

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 + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and enriches the caramel topping.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel flavor when cooked into the topping.
Pineapple juice
Adds moisture and fruity acidity to the thickened topping.

The step that matters

Turning the cake out. The butter and sugar topping hardens as it cools and can bond to the pan. Inverting the cake carefully and promptly helps the pineapple and cherries release cleanly onto the dish.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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