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Pineapple Cream Pie

A pineapple filling baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Add boiling water to the grated pineapple.

  2. When it boils, stir in the flour and corn starch that have been wet with a little water.

  3. Beat the mixture well, then add the sugar and the yolks of the eggs.

  4. Reserve the egg whites for frosting.

Bake the crust

  1. Bake the pie crust first.

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. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Pineapple + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving the cream a smooth, sliceable body.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling strongly when boiled, helping it set firm and glossy.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and add richness and additional thickening when gently cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the pineapple.
Grated pineapple
Provides the main flavor and moisture of the cream filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and corn starch once the pineapple boils. Starches must be wet and added to boiling liquid to thicken properly. Stirring them in dry or unevenly can leave lumps or a runny filling.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, corn, sugar, egg. 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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