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Dessert

Pineapple Pie

A sweet pie made with canned pineapple, sugar, eggs, flour, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the pineapple finely and drain it, measuring the juice.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped pineapple, sugar, beaten eggs, flour, and salt.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of the pineapple juice, adding water if necessary to make a full cup.

  4. Add lemon juice to taste.

  5. Dot the mixture with small pieces of butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Top the crust with strips of pastry.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the juice so the filling holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the pineapple.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and moisture for the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Pour in 1 cup of the pineapple juice, adding water if necessary to make a full cup.. The liquid must be measured accurately, because too little thins the set of the eggs and flour and too much leaves the filling runny after baking.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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