Name: Pineapple Souffle
Ingredients: 1 cup grated pineapple; ¾ cup sugar; ½ lemon, juiced; 5 egg whites; ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar; Butter for greasing; Sugar for dredging

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pineapple Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pineapple base

Cook the grated pineapple with sugar and lemon juice until thickened.

Make the soufflé

Beat the egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff peaks form.
Gradually fold in the cooled pineapple mixture into the egg whites.
Pour the mixture into a buttered and sugared 2-quart mold.

Bake and serve

Place the mold in a dish with several layers of paper and surround it with boiling water.
Cook for about 30 minutes without boiling the water.
Serve inverted from the mold with cream and sugar or boiled custard.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pineapple + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites: Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the soufflé its light, risen structure as it sets.
Cream of tartar: Stabilizes the whipped egg white foam so it holds its peaks longer before folding.
Grated pineapple: Provides the main fruit flavor and moisture in the soufflé base.
Sugar: Sweetens the pineapple base and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the pineapple flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding the pineapple into the egg whites. Egg white foam is fragile, and overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates the air bubbles that make the soufflé rise. Fold gently, and only after the pineapple mixture has cooled, so it does not melt or collapse the foam.