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Dessert

Pineapple Trifle

A layered dessert of pineapple, sponge cake, whipped cream, almonds, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, cut out the eyes, and slice the pineapple.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the pineapple and let it stand until the sugar dissolves.

Assemble the trifle

  1. Make holes in the stale sponge cake and pour in the syrup until absorbed.

  2. Place slices of pineapple on top and around the cake.

  3. Cover with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped almonds and candied cherries.

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. Pineapple + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the fresh fruit flavour and the sweet, slightly acidic juice that becomes the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves into the pineapple juice to form a syrup.
Stale sponge cake
Forms the base layer, soaking up the syrup so it becomes moist and tender.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy topping that softens the fruit and cake.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, almond. 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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