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Pineapple Pie

A sweet pie with pineapple filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, lemon juice, grated pineapple, butter, and cornstarch to the egg yolks.

  3. Pour the mixture into boiling water and cook in a double boiler until thick.

  4. Pour the thickened mixture into a baked pie shell.

Top and brown

  1. Make meringue by beating the egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar and a few drops of lemon extract.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie filling and set in the oven to 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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pineapple + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the pineapple filling as it cooks into a set custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Grated pineapple
Supplies the main fruit flavour and moisture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pineapple filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil, and cooking in a double boiler with the egg yolks needs gentle, steady heat. Stirring keeps the starch from clumping and the yolks from scrambling, so the filling sets smoothly.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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