Name: Tropical Snow
Ingredients: 12 sweet oranges; 1 grated coconut; 1 cup powdered sugar; 4 red bananas

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

12 sweet oranges
1 grated coconut
1 cup powdered sugar
4 red bananas

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces, dividing each lobe into thirds.
Remove the seeds and place a layer of orange pieces in the bottom of a glass dish.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Layer and serve

Spread a layer of grated coconut over the oranges.
Slice the bananas into very thin rounds and lay them on top of the coconut in a single layer.
Repeat the layering process until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of coconut sprinkled with powdered sugar and garnished with banana slices.
Serve immediately.

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.

Coconut + bananatop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together549 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet oranges: Provide the main juicy fruit base and natural sweetness and acidity.
Grated coconut: Adds a soft, slightly chewy texture and tropical aroma between fruit layers.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the fruit and dissolves in its juices to add sweetness.
Red bananas: Add creamy texture and a mellow sweetness to the layers.