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Dessert

Pineapple Filling

A pineapple and coconut filling sweetened with sugar, used between cake layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pineapple Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the pineapple coarsely and pour off some juice if necessary.

  2. Add half of the grated coconut and sweeten with pulverized sugar to taste.

  3. Spread the filling between four layers of cake baked in jelly tins.

  4. Grate coconut over the top layer and sprinkle with sugar, or cover with icing flavored with pineapple.

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 + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main moisture, sweetness and fruity flavor of the filling.
Grated coconut
Adds aroma, a chewy texture and richness to the filling and topping.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the pineapple.

The step that matters

Pour off excess pineapple juice. Free liquid from the pineapple can soak into the cake layers and make the filling runny, so draining off some juice keeps the filling thick enough to hold between layers.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, 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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