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Dessert

Pine-apple Toasts

Pineapple toasts are slices of pineapple stewed in rum, served with rum-soaked cake, apricot jam, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Cut the pineapple into slices about 1 inch thick.

  2. Stew the pineapple slices in rum over a bain-marie.

Prepare the cake

  1. Slice the Madeira cake into shapes matching the pineapple slices.

  2. Lightly fry the cake slices in butter.

  3. Dust the fried cake slices with powdered sugar.

  4. Spread apricot jam over each cake slice.

  5. Bake the jam-covered cake slices in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the pineapple slices.

  2. Arrange the drained pineapple slices alternately with the cake slices on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the syrup over the arranged slices 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. Rum + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the fruit base and sweet, acidic flavour, and its syrup moistens the dish.
Madeira cake
Forms the sponge base that soaks up syrup and carries the jam and sugar.
Rum
Adds aroma and depth to the pineapple as it stews.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and a glossy, fruity layer that bakes into the cake.
Butter
Browns the cake slices when frying, adding richness and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Baking the jam-covered cake slices. Baking at 350°F (175°C) warms the jam and cake until the jam loosens and the cake sets without drying out. Overbaking can dry the sponge and scorch the sugared jam.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, rum, butter, 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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