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Dessert

Pineapple Cream

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pineapple Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pineapple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatine in boiling water.

Make the pineapple mixture

  1. Add grated pineapple and juice of the lemon; sweeten with sugar if needed.

  2. Pour the mixture into a dish and set it on ice.

  3. Stir constantly until it thickens.

  4. Fold in the whipped cream.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until hardened.

  2. Serve with whipped cream tinted light pink.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Forms the gel network that sets the dessert firm enough to hold its shape.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the set dessert.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruity flavour, moisture and natural acidity to the gel.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the pineapple.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the acidity of the pineapple and lemon.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream while the mixture is thickened but still pourable. If the gelatine has already set firm, the cream cannot blend evenly and the dessert turns lumpy. If the mixture is still too thin, the cream deflates and the dessert will not hold its airy texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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