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Dessert

Pine-apple Fiudding

A pineapple pudding made with sponge cake, custard, and eggs, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pine-apple Fiudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding dish and line the bottom and sides with slices of stale sponge cake.

  2. Peel and slice the pineapple thinly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the pineapple in the dish, sprinkling sugar between layers until all is used. Cover with slices of cake and pour water or boiled custard over slowly. Cover with a buttered plate and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

Make the cream topping

  1. Alternatively, beat flour with cream, boil until thick, stirring constantly. When cool, beat yolks of eggs with butter and sugar. Fold in beaten egg whites and add small squares of pineapple. Bake in a pudding dish.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pineapple
Provides the main fruity flavour and moisture that fills the pudding.
Sponge cake
Soaks up the liquid and holds the layers together as a soft structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set to a smooth, rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the mixture and add airy structure.
Flour
Thickens the cream when boiled, giving body to the mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air only when beaten to stiff foam and folded in gently; overmixing or deflating them makes the pudding dense rather than light.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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