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Orange Compote, with Cocoa-nut

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange Compote, with Cocoa-nut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and slice the oranges.

  2. Layer the orange slices in a glass dish, sprinkling grated cocoa-nut between each layer.

  3. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water to make a thin syrup; heat until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Pour the hot syrup over the layered fruit.

  5. Chill the compote until cold, then sprinkle more cocoa-nut on top before serving.

  6. Optionally, add sliced bananas.

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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  2. Orange + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Cocoa + bananatop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the banana

The recipe marks banana as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, cocoa, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, cocoa, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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