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Dessert

Pineapple Tapioca

A dessert of tapioca cooked with sugar and water, topped with canned pineapple, currant jelly, and sweetened whipped cream.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil ½ cup Minute Tapioca and ½ cup sugar in 3 cups water until clear.

  2. Pour the mixture over 1 pint of canned pineapples.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, decorate the top with currant jelly.

  2. Serve with sweetened 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 + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Minute tapioca
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding its set and slightly clear, gel-like body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the tartness of the pineapple.
Canned pineapples
Provides the main fruit flavor and acidity, along with moisture in the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling until clear. Tapioca starch must be fully boiled to swell and thicken properly. Stopping early leaves the pudding starchy, cloudy, and loose, so it will not set well as it cools.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, 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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