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Dessert

Pineapple Ice

A frozen dessert made with gelatin, sweetened milk, pineapple, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 885 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Pineapple Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 1–2 hours.

  2. Boil hot water and sugar together for several minutes.

  3. Add the soaked gelatin to the boiling mixture and stir until dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the lemon juice and pineapples.

Freeze

  1. When the mixture begins to freeze around the sides, add the sweetened milk.

  2. Freeze until hard, then pack away.

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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture so the frozen ice holds a smooth, firm body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice soft enough to eat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sweetened milk
Adds fat and milk solids that give a creamier, less icy texture.

The step that matters

Add the sweetened milk at the right moment. Adding milk once the mixture just begins to freeze around the sides lets it blend in evenly. Adding it too early can cause curdling from the acid, and too late leaves streaks and uneven texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pineapple, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, milk. 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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