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Dessert

English Pineapple Pie

A pineapple pie with a puff pastry crust and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a plate with puff pastry and bake for 10 minutes or until the crust rises.

Make the filling and meringue

  1. Cook the pureed pineapple with ½ cup sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg or vanilla until thick.

  2. Prepare a meringue by beating egg whites and gradually adding ½ cup sugar until stiff peaks form.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the thick pineapple mixture into the baked crust and top with meringue.

  2. Bake until the meringue is light brown.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and, once cooked down, the thick body of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue as it whips.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pineapple flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until they hold firm peaks before sugar is added gradually. Under-whipped whites will weep or collapse, and over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry, so the meringue may not hold its shape in the oven.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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