Why it works: Milk and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Jelly Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.
Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold milk and add it to the boiling milk.
Stir continuously until the mixture thickens to the consistency of blancmange.
Spread a layer of the thickened mixture on the baked cake and top with grated coconut.
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.
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Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,648 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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