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Pineapple Tartlets

A baked pastry with pineapple filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare tart cases using puff paste or pie paste.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine grated pineapple, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until thick.

  3. Fill the tart cases with the thickened pineapple mixture.

Top and bake

  1. Make a meringue by beating egg whites and gradually adding powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the filled tarts.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the meringue is light brown.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the pineapple filling as they cook and add richness.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, stiff meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites to make a smooth, glossy meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet pineapple filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but overheating can scramble them and leave lumps. Cook over medium heat and stir steadily until the custard coats a spoon before filling the cases.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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