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Dessert

Pineapple Fritters

A fried batter of grated pineapple, flour, egg, and butter, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Grate the pineapple and save the juice.

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated pineapple, juice, flour, egg yolk, salt, melted butter, and enough cold water to make a thick batter.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff and fold it into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a frying kettle until it begins to smoke.

  2. Drop tablespoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove fritters with a skimmer and drain on brown paper.

  4. Arrange on a dish, dust with powdered sugar, and serve.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pineapple + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
The beaten egg white adds lightness, and the yolk enriches the batter for a tender interior.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch and gluten structure that holds the batter together and crisps when fried.
Pineapple
Adds moisture and sweetness, and its juice keeps the batter loose and flavorful.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the fritter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Stiffly beaten egg white traps air that expands in the hot oil, giving a light texture. Overmixing after folding deflates it, leaving dense fritters.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, 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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