Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓
Pineapple Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Cut the pineapple into small pieces.
Bruise the pieces in a mortar to extract the juice.
Make the mixture
Add the milk, cream, lemon juice, and sugar to the pineapple juice.
Strain the mixture through a sieve.
Freeze
Freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Pineapple + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together885 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tinned pineapple
- Provides the main fruit flavour and most of the liquid base.
- Cream
- Adds fat, which makes the ice cream smooth and rich in texture.
- Milk
- Adds liquid and milk solids that give body to the frozen base.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point for a softer scoop.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the pineapple flavour.
The step that matters
Bruise the pieces in a mortar to extract the juice. Breaking the pineapple releases its juice and flavour into the base. Pieces left whole give a weaker, less fruity flavour, and any unextracted fibre can leave the texture gritty after straining.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, milk, cream, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, milk, cream, 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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