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Dessert

Pineapple and Wine

A chilled fruit salad of pineapple, oranges, strawberries, and bananas sweetened with sugar and flavored with sherry or claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana 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 ↓

Pineapple and Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Dice the pineapple and slice the oranges, strawberries, and bananas.

  2. In a bowl, combine the diced pineapple, sliced oranges, halved strawberries, and sliced bananas.

Sweeten and chill

  1. Sprinkle the mixture with sugar.

  2. Drizzle with sherry or claret.

  3. Chill the dessert until ice-cold before serving.

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. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Supplies the main fruit body and a bright, tangy sweetness.
Oranges
Add juice and acidity that brighten the sweetness of the other fruit.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mellow sweetness to the salad.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice to form a light syrup.
Sherry or claret
Adds aromatic, winey depth that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Chill the dessert until ice-cold before serving. Cold firms the fruit and slows softening and browning, so the salad stays fresh-tasting. Serving it well chilled also keeps the wine's aroma from tasting harsh.

Swap the orange

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

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

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