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Pineapple Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pineapple Pudding

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 ↓

Pineapple 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. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Butter a pudding dish and line the bottom and sides with slices of stale sponge cake.

Assemble

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

  2. Pour ½ cup of water over the layers.

  3. Cover the top with more slices of cake that have been dipped in cold water.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish with a buttered plate and bake slowly for 2 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 structure that soaks up the juices and holds the pudding together.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and moisture as it softens during slow baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and helps draw out and flavour its juices.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with a buttered plate. The cover traps steam so the pineapple softens and the cake stays moist during the long, slow bake. Without it, the top may dry out and the layers may scorch.

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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