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Dessert

Pineapple in the Shell

A chilled fruit salad of pineapple, orange, and banana served in a pineapple shell and garnished with green leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple in the Shell

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select a pineapple with a nice green top.

  2. Cut off the top and remove the pineapple flesh.

  3. Cut the pineapple into small pieces.

  4. Mix the pineapple with an equal amount of orange and banana, then sprinkle with sugar.

  5. Chill the mixture.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, place the mixture back in the pineapple shell, replace the top, and surround the base with green leaves.

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 + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 flesh and the shell that serves as the presentation vessel.
Orange
Adds juice and a bright, acidic note that balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Banana
Adds soft body and mellow sweetness to the fruit mixture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, sugar. 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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