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Dessert

Pineapple with Floating Island

A chilled pineapple dessert topped with a floating island.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple with Floating Island

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Peel and remove the eyes from the pineapple.

  2. Tear shreds from the pineapple with a fork and discard the core.

Sweeten and serve

  1. Add sugar to taste and serve ice cold.

Variation

  1. For variation, slice bananas and serve with floating island instead of pineapple, adding sugar and pouring orange juice over them.

Serving tip

  1. Ensure the floating island is as cold as possible.

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 + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

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 base and its fresh, sweet-tart flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the fruit's acidity.
Bananas
Adds sweetness and a soft, creamy texture in the variation.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, sugar, banana):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, banana. 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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