Name: Orange Snow
Ingredients: sweet oranges; grated coconut; powdered sugar; orange juice; lemon juice; ice

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the sweet oranges and slice them.
Layer the orange slices in a glass dish with grated coconut and powdered sugar.
Alternate the layers, leaving a layer of grated coconut on top.

Finish and chill

Mix orange juice and lemon juice, then pour over the layered dish.
Place the dish on ice until ready to serve.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Sweet oranges: Provide the main fruit body and fresh citrus flavor of the dessert.
Grated coconut: Adds a soft, light texture and a mild sweet flavor between the orange layers.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the oranges and dissolves readily into their juices.
Orange juice: Adds moisture and extra orange flavor that soaks into the layers.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the oranges and sugar.