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Dessert

Cold Pineapple Pudding

A chilled pineapple custard made with isinglass, cream, brandy, and caster sugar.

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

Cold Pineapple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the isinglass in ¼ pint of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Chop the pineapple finely.

Make the pudding

  1. Whip the cream to stiff peaks and mix in the brandy and caster sugar.

  2. Dissolve the soaked isinglass and mix thoroughly with the pineapple and cream mixture.

  3. Pour into a greased mold and refrigerate until firm.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a serving dish and pour cold boiled custard around it.

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. Pineapple + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Isinglass
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Double cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and a moist, tender texture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the soaked isinglass and mix thoroughly with the pineapple and cream mixture.. Isinglass must be fully dissolved before it is combined, or it can set in small lumps instead of distributing evenly through the pudding and giving it a firm, uniform set.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, brandy. 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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