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Dessert

Pine-apple Pie

A baked pineapple custard pie with butter, sugar, cream, eggs, and grated pineapple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pine-apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. Beat the butter until creamy and frothy.

  2. Add the sugar and egg yolks, and continue beating until very light.

  3. Mix in the cream and grated pineapple.

  4. Fold in the egg whites beaten to stiff peaks.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Let cool and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and when beaten creamy it traps air for a lighter texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the butter become light and fluffy when beaten.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and bind the filling, while beaten whites add lift and set the pie as it bakes.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smooth, soft body.
Pineapple
Provides moisture, fruity flavour and acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring hard deflates them, so the pie will be denser and rise less as it bakes and sets.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, 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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