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Dessert

Pineapple Short-cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, flour, eggs, lemon, baking powder, and pineapple, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Short-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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, cold water, lemon juice, and lemon rind. Add baking powder and stir until combined.

  3. Divide the batter into two layers.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, place grated pineapple mixed with sugar between the layers.

  3. Top with whipped cream before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking, giving the cake its body.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Grated pineapple
Adds moisture and fruity sweetness between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Let the cake cool before adding the pineapple. A warm cake is soft and fragile and can crumble or turn soggy when the moist pineapple filling is spread over it. Cooling lets the layers firm up so they hold together.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, lemon, 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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