Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Fritters

Fried batter with pineapple pieces, sweetened and spiced, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Peel and slice the pineapple, then cover it with sugar and let it stand overnight.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, and salt to create a batter.

  2. Stir the pineapple into the batter when ready to fry.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter with pineapple into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown and serve hot, sprinkled with sugar.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the fritters their structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the fritters.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with the baking soda to help the fritters rise.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness, juice and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter soaks up grease and turns heavy instead of crisping and browning. Hot oil sets the outside quickly, helping the fritters brown and stay light inside.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, 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.

You might also like

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