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Dessert

Pine-apple Pudding

A baked pudding made with pineapple, sponge cake, sugar, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pine-apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Line the bottom and sides with slices of stale sponge cake.

  3. Pare and thinly slice the pineapple.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the pineapple slices in the dish, sprinkling sugar between each layer until all the pineapple is used.

  2. Pour ½ cup of water over the layers.

  3. Cover with slices of cake dipped in cold water.

  4. Cover the whole with a buttered plate and bake at 300°F (150°C) until set.

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. Butter + pineappletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 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

Stale sponge cake
Forms the lining and top layer that soaks up juices and holds the pudding together.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and juice that softens the cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and helps draw out its juice between the layers.
Butter
Greases the dish so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Dipping the top cake slices in cold water. Damp cake softens and takes up the juices as the pudding bakes, while dry cake would stay tough and patchy. Baking gently at 300°F keeps the cake and fruit tender rather than dried out.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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