Skip to main content
Dessert

Tinned Pine-apple Cream Pie

A custard pie made with canned pineapple, sugar, cream, and egg yolks, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tinned Pine-apple Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Strain the juice from the pineapple into a basin.

  2. Chop and pound the pineapple fruit.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the pineapple and sugar, and heat for a few minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the cream and beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Line small buttered tins with pie crust.

  2. Fill the tins with the mixture and bake until set.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pineapple + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving the pie a rich, creamy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the pineapple.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a smoother, softer texture.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and moisture in the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks set into a custard when heated, but if the mixture is too hot when they are added they can scramble into lumps. Removing the pan from the heat first lets them thicken the filling smoothly.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes