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Dessert

Pineapple Filling for Cake, Etc

A fruit filling made from diced pineapple, citron melon, and juice, sweetened with sugar and optionally lemon juice, then boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and melon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 114 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Pineapple Filling for Cake, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Combine diced pineapple, citron melon, and cold water in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then mash thoroughly and cook until soft.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it sit overnight.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the juice for 10 minutes, then add an equal measure of sugar.

  2. Continue boiling for 15 minutes until it begins to jell.

  3. If the pineapple is very ripe, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per pint of juice.

  4. Pour into jars and seal with paraffin.

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. Pineapple + melontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Melon + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and body of the filling.
Citron melon
Adds bulk and body to the fruit mixture as it cooks down.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken and set as it boils.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports setting when the pineapple is very ripe.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice until it begins to jell. Sugar and fruit pectin set only when the mixture reaches the right concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavor.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, melon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, melon, 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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