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Dessert

Pineapple Dressing

A creamy pineapple dressing made with egg yolks, pineapple juice, sugar, lemon juice, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, mix egg yolks, sugar, flour, and pineapple juice.

  2. Cook the mixture until thick.

Finish the dressing

  1. Once cool, add the lemon juice and thin slightly with cream.

  2. If desired, use whipped cream instead of plain cream.

  3. Drip the cream in slowly while beating constantly.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Their proteins set when heated, thickening the dressing into a smooth custard.
Flour
Starch swells with heat and helps thicken the mixture and stabilise it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Pineapple juice
Supplies the main fruit flavour and liquid for the custard base.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the sweetness.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture when used to thin the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thick. Egg yolk proteins set at moderate heat, so the double boiler keeps the heat gentle. Overheating can make the yolks curdle or turn grainy, so stir and watch closely until it thickens.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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