Name: Pineapple Pudding
Ingredients: stale cake (sponge cake is best); 1 large pineapple; sugar; ½ cup water

Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Pudding

Ingredients

stale cake (sponge cake is best)
1 large pineapple
sugar
½ cup water

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

Butter a pudding dish and line the bottom and sides with slices of stale cake.
Pare and thinly slice the pineapple.
Layer the pineapple in the dish, sprinkling sugar between layers until all is used.
Pour ½ cup of water over the layers.
Cover with slices of cake dipped in cold water.

Bake

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

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale cake: Forms the structure and soaks up juices so the pudding holds its shape.
Pineapple: Provides moisture, bright acidity and the main flavour.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out its juice as it bakes.

The step that matters

Covering with a buttered plate and baking low and slow. The cover traps steam so the cake and fruit stay moist, while the gentle 300°F heat softens the pineapple and sets the layers evenly without scorching the top. Uncovered or hotter baking would dry the cake before the fruit has softened.

“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.