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Pineapple Jelly

A gelatin dessert flavoured with pineapple, lemon and orange juice, with egg whites folded in.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pineapple Jelly

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pineapple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir together lemon juice, orange juice, and sugar.

  2. Dissolve gelatin in a little cold water and add it to 1 pint of boiling water.

Set and serve

  1. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add pineapple and beaten egg whites.

  2. Serve with whipped 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add a light, airy texture to the set mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the citrus acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Pineapple
Adds fruit flavour and body to the jelly.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the pineapple and egg whites. If the mixture is still very hot, the beaten egg whites can deflate and lose their airy texture. Cooling slightly also helps the gelatin begin to set evenly.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, gelatin, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, gelatin, sugar, egg. 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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