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Pine-apple Ambrosia

A chilled fruit dessert of pineapple, coconut, and sugar soaked in sherry or Marsala.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pine-apple Ambrosia

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. In a glass bowl, layer the pineapple squares and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Wet the layer with sherry or Marsala wine.

  3. Add a layer of grated coconut and sprinkle with more sugar.

  4. Repeat the layers of pineapple, sugar, and wine, finishing with a layer of coconut on top.

Serve

  1. Serve soon, as the pineapple will toughen if left in the wine for too long.

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 + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Coconut + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the fruit base and its bright, sweet flavour that the wine and sugar season.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juices that mix with the wine.
Sherry or marsala wine
Adds aroma and a mellow, slightly acidic depth to the fruit layers.
Coconut
Adds fat, texture and a soft, chewy contrast to the juicy fruit.

The step that matters

Serve soon after assembling. Pineapple left soaking in wine for too long will toughen, so the layers lose their fresh texture. Serving promptly keeps the fruit tender and the flavours bright.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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