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Dessert

Pine-apple Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, grated pineapple, and optionally pineapple jam and frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake pans and bake until golden brown.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cake with grated pineapple sprinkled with sugar or pineapple jam.

  3. Frost the outside of the cake and beat 2 tablespoons of pineapple into the frosting.

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for lightness.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the liquids and baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in to lighten the batter and aid rising.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks and folded in gently; overmixing deflates the foam, which removes the air that makes the cake rise and stay light.

Swap the pineapple

The recipe marks pineapple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg):

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

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