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Pine-apple Pudding

A baked pineapple pudding made with stale sponge cake, custard, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pine-apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding dish and line the bottom and sides with slices of stale sponge cake.

  2. Pare and slice the pineapple thinly.

Layer

  1. Layer the sliced pineapple in the dish with sugar until all is used.

  2. Cover with slices of cake.

  3. Pour water or boiled custard over slowly.

  4. Cover with a buttered plate and bake at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

Make the filling

  1. Beat flour with cream until thick, then cool.

  2. Beat yolks of eggs with butter and sugar.

  3. Fold in beaten egg whites and pineapple.

Finish

  1. Pour mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry and bake until the pastry is done.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sponge cake
Soaks up the liquid and forms the soft, bread-like body of the pudding.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness, acidity and fruity aroma that cut through the rich custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set into a smooth, creamy texture when heated.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the mixture and give it an airy texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a stable base that holds the custard together.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pudding a rich, tender texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Stirring them in too hard knocks out the air trapped in the foam, so the pudding bakes up dense instead of light and airy.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, egg, butter, 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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