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Pineapple Pudding

A sweet pudding made with tapioca, pineapple, citrus, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pineapple Pudding

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pineapple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak tapioca overnight or for half a day in 1 cup cold water.

Cook and finish

  1. Drain the water and stir the tapioca into 1 cup of boiling water along with the other ingredients.

  2. Cook slowly until almost clear.

  3. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Cool in the refrigerator and serve with whipped cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Tapioca
Thickens the pudding as it cooks, giving it a soft, translucent, gel-like body.
Egg whites
Folded in at the end to add lightness and a fluffy texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Pineapple
Adds fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until almost clear. Tapioca starch needs gentle, sustained heat to swell and thicken fully. Cooking too fast can scorch the bottom or leave the starch grainy and under-thickened.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

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