The point I was making is that there are certain groups of ingredients that are recognizable as a base for other dishes, and in this case it was a "bread pudding" base. Institutional kitchens often prepare bread pudding, and in their search to change it - inexpensively - they sometimes experiment with adding other ingredients.
As for the name "Scalloped Pineapple", here's something of interest which I only offer as a bit of culinary terminology history:
Scalloped
Beyond the cutout shape of scalloping an edge, it's applied to dishes to describe a style of cooking. There can be scalloped potatoes (the most well known), scalloped corn, scalloped tomatoes, etc. What all of these have in common is that they are cooked covered in bread crumbs.
Most people presume that "scalloped" also involves a cream sauce, because they are thinking of scalloped potatoes, which does. However, that isn't usually the case with scalloped tomatoes. Most recipes for scalloped tomatoes just have them dotted with butter and then sprinkled with breadcrumbs; occasionally some grated cheese is sprinkled on as well.
Carlotta C. Greer, in her book School and Home Cooking (Ohio, 1920) certainly presumes that scalloped dishes have crumbs: in a short entry headed "Crumbs for scalloped dishes", she gives directions for making seasoned crumbs.
So are breadcrumbs the determining factor in making a dish scalloped? It may have been at one time, but many people now make scalloped potatoes with a cream sauce, but no bread crumbs. (Though why on earth you'd pass up any opportunity to have buttered bread crumbs is past knowing.)
A few people speculate that for a dish to be called "scalloped" there needs to be grated cheese happening, but many dishes said to be "scalloped" don't involve cheese. In fact, "scalloped potatoes with cheese" already has a name -- it's called "Potatoes Dauphinois" (or Gratin Dauphinois, to give it its full French name.) Besides, the more people hear of all these extra bits on scalloped potatoes such as breadcrumbs and cheese, the more they will just become convinced that they were truly cheated at their childhood dinner table.
It's a trickier matter trying to deduce how scalloped come to be applied to potatoes in the first place. One way might have been a transference of ideas from "scalloped oysters." Scalloped oysters were first cooked in scallop shells, sprinkled with bread crumbs. This may have come about because oyster shells are actually pretty grubby looking, whereas scallop shells clean up very presentably, far more suitable for putting on someone's plate to impress. At some point, a variation arose that had a cream sauce being applied to them as well, and at a later point, the scallop shells were dropped altogether and the oysters were simply arranged in a baking dish, then covered with sauce and crumbs.
Quoted, in part, from "Practically Edible"; c2010
