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Dessert

Pineapple Pie

A pie with a pineapple custard filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Drain the juice from the pineapple.

  2. Combine lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan.

  3. Boil the mixture for 3 minutes.

  4. Mix corn starch with water.

  5. Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling mixture along with the pineapple.

  6. Break the yolks into the hot mixture, stir quickly, and cook until thick.

Bake the shell

  1. Line a pie dish with pastry.

  2. Bake the pastry until golden.

  3. Fill the baked pastry shell with the pineapple mixture.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites. Gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites until firm.

  2. Spread the meringue over the custard.

  3. Bake until the meringue is firm and brown.

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

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

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  4. Pineapple + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and most of the filling's body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilises the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pineapple filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling as they cook; whites whip into the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks into the hot filling. Stir quickly when the yolks go into the hot mixture to keep them from scrambling in lumps. Cornstarch thickens only when hot, so cook until the filling is visibly thick before filling the shell.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, corn, egg, butter. 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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