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Dessert

Pineapple Cake

A baked cake with pineapple slices on the bottom, sweetened with brown sugar and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the topping

  1. Melt the butter and brown sugar together in a frying pan.

  2. Lay the pineapple slices in the pan to cover the bottom.

  3. Add candied cherries or nuts if desired.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar and egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  2. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and pineapple juice.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the batter over the pineapple in the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 25 minutes.

  2. Turn the cake upside down onto a plate and serve with 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pineapple + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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
Egg yolks and whipped whites give the cake its rich structure and light, airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the brown sugar caramelise into the topping.
Brown sugar
Melts into the butter to form the caramel layer and adds moisture and sweetness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the batter rises and becomes lighter.
Pineapple
Adds acidity and moisture, and its juice keeps the sponge tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that makes the cake rise. Stirring them vigorously or letting them deflate before baking leads to a dense, flat cake.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, pineapple, egg, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pineapple, egg, 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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