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Dessert

Lemon Pineapple Pie

A pie made with pineapple, lemon, sugar, flour, eggs, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lemon Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine water, pineapple, salt, lemon juice, lemon zest, and flour in a double boiler.

  2. Cook until thick.

  3. Pour into a baked pie shell.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 1 tablespoon of sugar and cream of tartar.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

  4. Brown it in the oven.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Egg whites whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the pineapple and lemon mixture as it cooks.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so the meringue holds its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue become stable and glossy.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and zest.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Flour thickens only when the mixture is heated enough for its starch to swell. Undercooked filling stays runny and can make the pie soggy or hard to slice once set.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, flour, egg, 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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