Name: The Way to Make Small, Fancy Wafers
Ingredients: vanilla wafer mixture; coconut (for topping); vanilla icing (for fancy wafers); chocolate icing (for fancy wafers)

Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

The Way to Make Small, Fancy Wafers

Ingredients

vanilla wafer mixture
coconut (for topping)
vanilla icing (for fancy wafers)
chocolate icing (for fancy wafers)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grease a baking pan.
Press the vanilla wafer mixture through a tube onto the pan, making circles the size of a quarter, spaced 2 inches apart.
For coconut wafers, sprinkle coconut on top before baking.
For fancy wafers, ice the bottoms with vanilla or chocolate icing after baking, then sprinkle coconut over the 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.

Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,294 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Coconut + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,107 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).