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Dessert

Pineapple Pie

A pie made with pineapple, eggs, sugar, corn starch, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and corn work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 150 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Bring the pineapple to a boil.

  2. Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  3. Add corn starch and remove from heat.

  4. While hot, stir in the beaten egg whites.

Fill and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and serve with whipped cream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Egg + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavor and moisture for the filling.
Eggs
Thicken and enrich the filling as they set with gentle heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot pineapple liquid into a sliceable filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the pineapple.
Pastry for pie crust
Forms the shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks and sugar.. Adding the yolks slowly to the hot pineapple, while stirring, warms them gently. Dumping them in at once can scramble the eggs and leave lumps in the filling.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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