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Dessert

Pineapple Parfait

A chilled dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, water, heavy cream, grated pineapple, lemon juice, ice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pineapple Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, beat the yolks of 6 eggs until stiff.

  2. Slowly add 1 cup of sugar boiled in 1 cup of water for 5 minutes.

  3. Continue to cook until the mixture thickens enough to coat the spoon, then beat until cold.

Finish and freeze

  1. Fold in 1 pint of very stiff whipped cream, 2 cups of grated pineapple, and the juice of 1 small lemon.

  2. Pack the mixture into a mold and bury it in ice and salt for 5 hours 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 yolks
Thicken the base and add richness as they cook into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the frozen dessert from freezing rock-hard.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and airy body, giving the parfait its smooth, light texture.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and moisture to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the pineapple flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolk custard until it coats the spoon. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Stop once the mixture coats a spoon, then beat it cold so the base stays smooth before the cream is folded in.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, lemon. 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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