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Dessert

Mock Pineapple

A fruit salad of sliced apples and oranges, drizzled with fruit juice, lemon, optional sherry, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mock Pineapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apples crosswise into thin rounds.

  2. Peel and remove the white fiber from the oranges, then slice them crosswise a little thicker than the apples.

Assemble and serve

  1. On a plate, layer a round of apple with a round of orange, creating a circle.

  2. Pour the saved juice, sherry (if using), and lemon juice over the fruit.

  3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide firm, crisp fruit slices that hold their shape and add tart flavour.
Oranges
Add sweetness, juice and bright citrus aroma to the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slows browning of cut apple.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the juices, adding sweetness to the fruit.

The step that matters

Slice the apples thinly and assemble promptly. Cut apple flesh oxidises and turns brown when exposed to air. Thin rounds exposed for long periods discolour quickly, so the lemon juice and juices should be added soon after slicing to limit browning.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, orange, sherry, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, orange, sherry, sugar. 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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