Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with pineapple, lemon juice, and sugar, set in a chilled mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pineapple Pudding

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pineapple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 pint of water for 1 hour.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water and 1 pint of sugar to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Place the mixture over the fire and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the grated pineapple and lemon juice.

Set and serve

  1. Set the mixture on ice to form.

  2. Once cold, serve with cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a wobbly, sliceable structure as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds body to the set liquid.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and moisture in the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and pineapple flavour.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine fully before heating. Gelatine must hydrate in cold water before it is heated so it dissolves evenly. Undissolved granules left in the mixture will not set properly and can leave a grainy or lumpy texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, 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.

More pineapple pudding recipes

Frozen 7Sauce 6Tapioca 5 See all 96 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes