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Dessert

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

A baked cake with pineapple and brown sugar topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the topping

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Spread the brown sugar over the melted butter.

  3. Spread the crushed pineapple over the brown sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add the white sugar and pineapple juice to the yolks.

  3. Mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the pan over the pineapple.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + pineappletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whipped whites and yolks give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Melted butter coats the pan and adds richness and flavor to the topping.
Brown sugar
Melts into a caramel layer that sweetens and flavors the pineapple topping.
Crushed pineapple
Provides fruit, moisture, and the visible topping that becomes the cake's surface.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes tender.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps the air from deflating so the cake bakes up light.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour. 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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