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Dessert

Fifty Lunches

A pineapple jam and rum sauce thickened with cornstarch, served over pineapple slices with whipped cream and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the pineapple syrup, apricot jam, rum, lemon juice, and cornstarch.

  2. Bring to a boil, then strain and cool the mixture.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once cold, pour it over the pineapple slices.

  2. Top with whipped cream and blend in the pounded pistachio nuts.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Apricot + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 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

Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity body to the sauce.
Rum
Contributes aroma and a warm, boozy flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the jam and syrup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce when heated, giving it a glossy, pourable body.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture on top of the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then strain and cool the mixture. Cornstarch must reach a boil to fully thicken the sauce. If it is not cooked enough, the sauce stays thin; once cooled, it sets to the intended consistency before it is poured over the fruit.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, rum, cream, pistachio, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, rum, cream, pistachio, nuts. 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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