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Pineapple Filling

A sweet pineapple filling made with grated pineapple, lemon juice, sugar, and confectioner's sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, cook the grated pineapple and granulated sugar over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice.

  3. Add enough confectioner's sugar to achieve a firm filling.

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

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Grated pineapple
Provides the fruit base, moisture and most of the filling's flavour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and helps it cook down into a thicker, jammy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pineapple flavour.
Confectioner's sugar
Sweetens and stiffens the filling so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the confectioner's sugar. Confectioner's sugar stiffens the filling as it dissolves, so it is best added gradually. Adding too much at once can make the filling stiff and overly sweet, while adding too little leaves it soft and runny.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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