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Pineapple Fritters

A fried batter coating pineapple pieces, served with a sweet pineapple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the drained pineapple and sprinkle with sugar; let stand for 1 hour.

  3. Prepare a thick fritter batter; if too thin, add more flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each piece of pineapple in the batter and drop into hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown, then drain on paper towels.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. For a sauce, combine pineapple juice, sugar, and butter in a saucepan until melted.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Pineapple + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the thick batter that sets around the pineapple as it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters puff and stay light.
Pineapple
Provides the juicy, tangy filling that contrasts with the crisp coating.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the coating brown in the hot oil.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth body to the pineapple sauce.

The step that matters

Dropping the pineapple into hot oil. Hot oil sets the batter quickly, forming a crisp crust that limits how much oil the fritter absorbs. Cold oil lets the batter soak up grease and turn heavy.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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