Name: Metropolitan Meringues
Ingredients: meringue mixture; sponge cake; sugar; boiled chocolate icing; desiccated coconut; jelly; colored icing

Why it works: Chocolate and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,107 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Metropolitan Meringues

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.

Spread the meringue mixture 1 inch thick on a sponge cake strip 5 inches wide.
Smooth the top into a half-circle shape and dust with sugar.
Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
Ice the entire length with a thin coat of boiled chocolate icing.
Cut into slices 1-1.5 inches wide, dipping the knife in water for a clean cut.
Optionally, use desiccated coconut instead of chocolate icing or leave plain and decorate with jelly or colored icing.

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.

Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,107 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,742 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).