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Dessert

Tropical Snow

A layered fruit dessert of oranges, bananas, coconut, sherry, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 549 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Tropical Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces, removing the seeds.

Layer and serve

  1. In a glass bowl, layer the oranges and wet them with sherry, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Add a layer of grated coconut, then slice the bananas thinly and cover the coconut with the banana slices.

  3. Repeat the layering until the bowl is filled, finishing with a heap of coconut on top.

  4. Serve immediately to prevent the oranges from toughening.

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 + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sherry + bananatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet oranges
Provide the main fruit base, with juice that is soaked up by the sherry and sugar.
Sherry
Moistens the oranges and adds a mild, aromatic flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the oranges and dissolves into their juices.
Coconut
Adds a soft, chewy texture and a light tropical flavour, forming the snowy topping.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture between the layers.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Oranges soften and toughen as they sit, and the layers begin to lose their texture once the sugar and sherry draw out juice. Serving at once keeps the fruit tender and the layers distinct.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, sherry, sugar, banana):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, sherry, sugar, banana. 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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