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Dessert

Pineapple Pie

A pie with a filling of grated pineapple, sugar, flour, and egg baked between crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix together the flour and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the grated pineapple pulp and juice, then stir and cook over medium heat until the mixture boils and thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg.

  4. If using canned pineapple, add sugar gradually until the desired sweetness is reached.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling between two pie crusts and bake.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Flour + pineappletop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the pineapple.
Grated pineapple pulp and juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and liquid for the filling.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the filling once it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when hot and can curdle or scramble if added to a boiling mixture. Removing the pan from heat first lets the egg thicken the filling gently and evenly.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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