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Dessert

Pineapple Filling

A sweet pineapple filling made with boiled sugar, beaten egg whites, lemon juice, and grated pineapple, used between cake layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the sugar until it becomes stringy.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Mix the boiled sugar into the beaten egg whites.

  4. Add fresh lemon juice for flavor.

  5. Strain the grated pineapple to remove the juice.

Assemble the cake

  1. Spread the pineapple between cake layers with icing.

  2. Use icing only on the top layer.

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. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the filling its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Boiled into a syrup that sweetens the filling and helps set the whipped whites.
Grated pineapple
Provides fruity moisture and flavor to the filling between the layers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and pineapple.

The step that matters

Mix the boiled sugar into the beaten egg whites.. The hot sugar syrup cooks and stabilizes the whipped egg whites. If the syrup has cooled or the sugar has not reached the stringy stage, the foam can stay loose and deflate.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon. 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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