Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Pineapple Tarts
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the pineapple
Remove the crown from the pineapple and cut it into quarters.
Remove the core and grate the fruit down to the rind.
Mix the grated pineapple with ½ cup of powdered sugar and let it sit in a cool place for 1 hour.
Stew the pineapple
In a porcelain kettle, simmer the pineapple and sugar gently until tender.
Bake and fill the tarts
Line patty pans with the puff pastry and bake the tart shells at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
Fill the baked tart shells with the stewed pineapple and serve hot or cold.
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.
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Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Pineapple
- Forms the main filling, providing moisture and fruity sweetness once stewed until tender.
- Puff pastry
- Creates a flaky, crisp shell as its layers of fat and dough puff and brown in the oven.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the filling and draws juice from the grated fruit, helping it soften in the stew.
The step that matters
Simmer the pineapple gently until tender. Gentle heat lets the fruit's cell walls soften evenly and the sugar dissolve without scorching. Vigorous boiling can burn the sugar and leave the fruit stringy or dry.
“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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