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Dessert

Pineapple Charlotte

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup of cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  4. Stir in 1 cup of shredded pineapple and set aside to cool.

Finish

  1. Before it is completely cool, fold in ½ pint of 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. Lemon + pineappletop 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. Sugar + pineappletop 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 liquid into a soft, sliceable structure once cooled.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a creamy texture to the set mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the pineapple.
Shredded pineapple
Provides fruit flavour and moisture to the dessert.

The step that matters

Fold in the cream before the mixture is completely cool. If the gelatine mixture has set too far, the whipped cream will not blend evenly and the dessert may be lumpy. If it is still too warm, the cream will deflate and the set will be weak.

Swap the lemon

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

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