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Dessert

Pineapple Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, pineapple juice, egg whites, flour, and topped with pineapple pulp icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the pineapple juice gradually.

  3. Sift the baking powder into the flour and add half to the mixture along with half of the egg whites. Beat well.

  4. Add the remaining flour and egg whites. Beat until smooth.

Bake the layers

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake.

Ice and assemble

  1. Beat the egg whites until half stiff. Gradually add XXX sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread strained pineapple pulp on the cakes.

  3. Top with the icing.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + pineappletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake's shape as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and a rich texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped egg whites trap air and add lightness and structure to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Pineapple juice
Adds moisture and fruity acidity to the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form. Sugar added gradually stabilizes the whipped foam, so it holds its peaks. Under-beaten whites stay loose, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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