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Pineapple Fritters

Fried batter with pineapple, served plain or powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Pineapple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light, then add the shredded pineapple.

  2. Sift together the flour, sugar, and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  3. If the pineapple is thin and juicy, drain some juice or add an additional ½ cup of flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into deep fat and fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve plain or dusted with powdered 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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they are beaten light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fritter together while it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Shredded pineapple
Adds moisture and fruity flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Check the batter consistency with juicy pineapple. Juicy pineapple thins the batter, so it may spread and fry heavy or greasy. Draining juice or adding flour restores a thick batter that holds its shape in the hot fat.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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