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Dessert

Pineapple Cream Pudding

A chilled dessert made with pineapple, custard, whipped cream, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and sherry work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Line the bottom and sides of a mold with slices of canned pineapple.

  2. Place a candied cherry in the center of each slice.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix pineapple juice with beaten egg yolks over low heat until it thickens.

  2. Add chopped pineapple and sherry to the thickened mixture, then set aside to cool.

  3. Fold the cooled custard into the whipped cream.

Chill and serve

  1. Fill the mold with the custard mixture and refrigerate for 3 hours.

  2. Turn out the pudding from the mold and decorate with additional whipped cream before serving.

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. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the pineapple juice into a smooth custard as they set with gentle heat.
Whipped cream
Lightens the custard and gives the pudding a soft, airy texture.
Pineapple juice
Provides the liquid base and fruity flavor for the custard.
Canned pineapple slices
Form the decorative lining and add fruity sweetness and moisture.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over low heat. Egg yolks set when heated, but at high heat or for too long they can curdle or scramble. Gentle heat and constant stirring let the custard thicken smoothly before cooling.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sherry, 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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