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Dessert

Pine Apple Short Cake

A baked cake with pineapple slices and a sweet topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pine Apple Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter, sugar, and egg together until creamy.

  3. Add the milk and sift in the flour with the baking powder; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into a deep jelly tin and bake until done.

Assemble and top

  1. Cool the cake, then split it in the center.

  2. Layer the sliced pineapple between the cake halves and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg white until stiff, then gradually add the loaf sugar and pineapple juice.

  4. Spread the mixture on top of the cake and serve immediately with whipped cream or sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Whipped egg white gives the topping its light, stiff, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once mixed with the wet ingredients.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Canned pineapple
Adds moisture and fruity acidity that cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff. Egg white must be whipped to stiff peaks with no trace of yolk or grease, since fat stops the foam from holding. Adding sugar gradually helps the foam stay stable and glossy.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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