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Dessert

Pine-apple Toasts

A dessert of stewed pineapple served with rum-soaked cake slices, apricot jam, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and rum work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 451 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pine-apple Toasts

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 pineapple

  1. Stew the pineapple slices in thin syrup with the rum, keeping them simmering in a bain-marie.

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut the Madeira cake into slices the same shape as the pineapple slices.

  2. Lightly fry the cake slices in butter and dust them with powdered sugar.

  3. Place the fried cake slices in a 400°F (200°C) oven, spreading apricot jam over each slice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the pineapple slices and arrange them alternately with the cake slices on a hot dish.

  2. Pour the syrup over the arranged pineapple and cake before serving.

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 + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rum + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Rum + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

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 moisture, and is softened by gentle simmering in syrup.
Madeira cake
Forms the base slices, soaking up syrup and holding the toppings in place.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour to the simmering pineapple syrup.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and a glossy layer that flavours the cake slices.
Butter
Adds fat and browning when the cake slices are lightly fried.

The step that matters

Stewing the pineapple gently. Keeping the slices at a gentle simmer in a bain-marie softens the fruit evenly without breaking it apart. Boiling hard would make the slices ragged and can toughen the texture of the fruit.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits about as well
  3. Apricotthe original
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, rum, butter, sugar, syrup. 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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