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Dessert

Fruit Dessert

A chilled layered dessert of banana, orange, apple, honey, coconut, and nuts served with optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fruit Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Skin and dice the banana.

  2. Slice the peeled oranges, removing seeds.

Layer and chill

  1. In a glass dish, layer the diced banana, sliced oranges, shredded coconut, honey, and chopped nut-meats.

  2. Chill the dessert and serve with whipped cream sweetened with a little honey or maple syrup.

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. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Honey + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Apple + honeytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide juicy, acidic fruit that brightens the sweetness of the dessert.
Banana
Adds soft, creamy body and natural sweetness to the layers.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture that softens the fruit as the dessert chills.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and a toasty, fatty richness to the layers.
Chopped nut-meats
Add crunch and fat that contrast with the soft fruit.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, honey, meat, banana, coconut, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, honey, meat, banana, coconut, cream. 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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