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Dessert

Pine Apple Snow

A chilled gelatin dessert made with pineapple, egg whites, and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Pine Apple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of cold water until moist.

  3. Add 1 cup of boiling water to the gelatine and stir until dissolved.

Combine and set

  1. Strain the mixture and add the grated pineapple and beaten egg whites.

  2. Sweeten to taste and stir gently.

  3. Pour into a mould that has been wet with water.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the snow its light, airy, fluffy texture.
Gelatine
Dissolved and chilled, it sets the liquid into a wobbly, sliceable structure.
Grated pineapple
Supplies the fruit flavour and acidity that brightens the sweet, creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg whites. Gentle folding keeps the air bubbles in the stiffly beaten whites intact. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam, leaving a dense rather than snowy texture.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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