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Cold Pine-apple Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made from pineapple juice, pulp, macaroons, almonds, and flavored gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 428 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cold Pine-apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Pound the pineapple and strain it through a fine sieve.

  2. Simmer the juice in a saucepan until reduced by half.

  3. Pound and sift the macaroons.

  4. Blanch and chop the almonds.

Make and set the pudding

  1. Combine the reduced juice with the pineapple pulp, dissolved gelatin, macaroons, and almonds.

  2. Decorate the bottom of a mold with sweetened, dissolved gelatin colored red with cochineal extract.

  3. Once set, pour clear gelatin over the sides and decorate with pieces of angelica or citron.

  4. When firm, fill the mold with the pineapple mixture and let it solidify.

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 + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pineapple + gelatintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Almond + gelatintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main flavor and moisture, with its juice reduced to concentrate the taste.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable structure.
Macaroons
Add body and a crumbly, sweet almond-like texture to the filling.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Reducing the pineapple juice. Simmering concentrates the juice's flavor and removes excess water, so the set pudding is not watery or weakly flavored. Reduce it only until it is half its volume, since over-reducing can make the flavor too intense and the final texture harder to control.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, gelatin):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, gelatin. 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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