Name: Pine-apple Iced Pudding, D LA Regale
Ingredients: 2 ripe medium-sized pineapples; 6 ounces syrup; 1 pint boiling cream; 6 ounces sugar; 12 egg yolks; preserved cherries; 2 ounces pistachios, cut into strips; 2 pears, cut into large dice

Why it works: Pineapple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 169 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pine-apple Iced Pudding, D LA Regale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

Peel the pineapples, trim the corners, slice the flesh into quarter-inch thick slices, and cut into large dice.
Boil the pineapple pieces in syrup for 10 minutes.
Cut the peel into dice and boil it in boiling cream for a few minutes.

Make the custard

Add sugar and egg yolks to the cream mixture and thicken over low heat.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.
Once cooled, mix in the syrup from the pineapples and freeze the mixture.

Add the fruit and freeze

When frozen, add the fruit pieces, preserved cherries, pistachios, and pears, mix well, and freeze again.
Fill a mold with the mixture and set it on ice.

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.

Pineapple + peartop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together169 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Pistachio + peartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Thicken the cream mixture and give the frozen pudding a rich, smooth body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
Cream: Provides fat that makes the frozen pudding smooth and creamy rather than icy.
Pineapples: Supply the main fruit flavour and pieces throughout the frozen pudding.
Syrup: Adds moisture and sweetness to the pineapple and the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Thicken the custard over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if heated too quickly, which leaves lumps. Gentle heat lets them thicken the cream smoothly, and straining afterwards removes any small bits that do form.

Swap the pistachio

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

Chestnutfits about as well
Almondfits about as well
Hazelnutfits about as well
Pistachiothe original

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

Pineapple Sherbet116 recipes

Pineapple Pudding72 recipes

Pineapple Cream58 recipes

Pineapple Jelly39 recipes

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Pine-apple Iced Pudding, D LA Regale