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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with oranges, bananas, pineapple, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the oranges into small pieces.

  2. Cover the orange pieces with sugar.

  3. Let stand for 1 hour.

  4. Pour off the juice.

Layer and set

  1. Layer the orange pieces in a small mold.

  2. Layer the banana pieces.

  3. Layer the grated pineapple.

  4. Dissolve the gelatine in water.

  5. Add the dissolved gelatine to the orange juice.

  6. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  7. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  8. Pour the gelatine mixture over the fruit layers.

  9. Refrigerate until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Gelatine
Sets the juice into a firm, sliceable gel that holds the fruit layers together.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice from the oranges as it stands.
Oranges
Provide citrus acidity and juice that becomes the base of the gelatine mixture.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the layered fruit.
Pineapple
Adds tropical flavour and juicy texture to the layers.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until boiling. Gelatine must be fully dissolved to set evenly. Cooling slightly before pouring keeps the heat from softening the soft fruit layers.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, pineapple, cream. 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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