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Dessert

Pineapple Bavarian Cream

A chilled dessert made from cooked pineapple, sugar, gelatin, lemon juice, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Bavarian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pineapple base

  1. Cook the grated pineapple and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Soften the gelatine in cold water, then add it to the pineapple mixture along with the lemon juice.

Finish the cream

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then gently fold in the 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.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture into a soft, sliceable structure as it chills.
Whipped cream
Adds airy richness and a lighter, creamy texture to the set dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and helps balance its tartness.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and moisture for the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pineapple flavour.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool before folding in the whipped cream. If the pineapple mixture is still hot, it can deflate the whipped cream and melt its structure. Cooling it until just thickened lets the cream keep its air while the gelatine begins to set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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