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Cocoanut Sandwiches

A sandwich with coconut, walnuts, whipped cream, and powdered sugar spread on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 606 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Cocoanut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the shredded coconut, lemon juice, chopped walnuts, and whipped cream.

  2. Add powdered sugar to taste and mix well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture on slices of brown or white bread.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and 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.

  1. Coconut + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Shredded coconut
Provides chewy texture and a toasted coconut flavour in the filling.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a slightly bitter, nutty contrast to the soft filling.
Heavy cream
Whipped, it adds airy richness and moisture that binds the filling together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich cream.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, walnut, cream, sugar, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, walnut, cream, sugar, bread. 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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