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Dessert

Pineapple Raisin Pie

A fruit pie made with diced canned pineapple, raisins, sugar, flour, and butter, baked in a pie shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Raisin Pie

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.

Make the filling

  1. Combine pineapple, raisins, and water in a saucepan and boil for 3 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, salt, and flour until blended.

  3. Let the mixture cool until half set.

  4. Add the beaten egg and butter to the mixture and stir well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into a prepared pie shell and cover with a top crust.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 25 minutes, until the pie is well browned.

  3. Optionally, add a teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar to the filling.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Pineapple
Provides fruity moisture and flavour that forms the body of the filling.
Egg
Helps the beaten filling thicken and set as it cools and bakes.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smoother, more tender filling.

The step that matters

Cooling until half set. Letting the mixture cool before adding the egg keeps the egg from scrambling and lets the starch-thickened filling reach a body that holds during baking.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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