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Dessert

Pineapple Snow

A gelatin dessert made with pineapple, lemon juice, egg whites, and custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pineapple Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pineapple snow

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of water for 1 hour.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatine in 1 pint of boiling water.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

  4. When the mixture is partially cold, fold in the beaten egg whites and grated pineapple.

  5. Turn the mixture into a mold.

Serve

  1. To serve, make a soft custard with the egg yolks or use cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 liquid into a light, firm mould that holds its shape when turned out.
Egg whites
Beaten into the mixture to give the snow its light, airy, foamy texture.
Grated pineapple
Adds fruit flavour and acidity to the sweetened mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard served alongside the pineapple snow, adding richness.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Fold the beaten whites in only when the mixture is partially cold. If it is still warm, the whites deflate; if it has set too far, lumps form and the snow loses its airy texture.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, 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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