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Dessert

Pippins, Stewed

Battered pineapple slices fried in lard and served with sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pippins, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the pineapple with minimal waste and cut it into thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in brandy or liqueur and pounded sugar for 4 hours.

Batter and fry

  1. Make a batter using cream instead of milk and less flour than for apple fritters.

  2. Dip the soaked pineapple slices in the batter.

  3. Fry the battered slices in boiling lard for 5 to 8 minutes, turning until browned.

  4. Drain the fried slices from the lard and place them on a white doily or paper.

Serve

  1. Strew sifted sugar over the fried slices and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Pineapple + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Forms the fruit centre of the fritter, becoming tender and juicy when fried.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the slices and sets into a crisp, golden shell when fried.
Cream
Replaces milk in the batter, adding richness and a softer, tender coating.
Boiling lard
Conducts heat to cook the batter quickly and brown its surface.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the pineapple during soaking and helps the fruit caramelise lightly when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the battered slices. The lard must be hot enough to set the batter quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it browns, and the fruit overcooks.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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