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Dessert

Pineapple Blanc Mange

A chilled pineapple dessert made with pineapple juice, water, cornstarch, sugar, and beaten egg whites, garnished with pineapple slices and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the pineapple juice and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water, then add it to the boiling mixture and cook for another 5 minutes.

Finish and set

  1. Remove from heat, add sugar, and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Mold the mixture and chill it.

  3. Decorate with slices of pineapple and chopped English walnuts before serving.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the boiled juice mixture into a gel-like body that holds its shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness and a foamy texture to the set dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the pineapple juice.
Pineapple juice
Provides the main liquid and pineapple flavor of the dessert.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the whipped foam's air intact. Stirring vigorously or letting the mixture get too warm can deflate the foam, leaving a denser, less light texture.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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