Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Snow

A chilled gelatin dessert made with pineapple, sugar, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Peel and grate the pineapple, then cover it with sugar and let it stand for 1 hour.

  3. Stir the soaked gelatine into the pineapple mixture.

  4. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool without stiffening.

Whip and set

  1. Whip the cream until very stiff.

  2. Set the saucepan in a bowl of cracked ice and gradually beat in the whipped cream.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture is stiff and white.

  4. Transfer to a glass bowl and chill in the ice for several hours.

  5. Serve with rich cream.

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

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

  3. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a light, stable, spoonable structure as it cools.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and acidity, and its juice is part of the liquid that sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and draws out its juice when it stands.
Heavy cream
Whipped to air, it adds volume, richness and a soft, fluffy texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool without stiffening before whipping in the cream. Gelatine sets as it cools below its setting point. If the mixture thickens too early it will not blend smoothly with the whipped cream and may form lumps, so it should be cool and syrupy but still pourable before folding in the cream over ice.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes