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Dessert

Tropical Snow

A layered dessert of oranges, coconut, sherry, bananas, 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 by dividing each lobe crosswise into thirds.

  2. Remove the seeds and place a layer of the fruit in the bottom of a glass dish.

  3. Pour a little sherry over the oranges and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  4. Prepare the coconut by removing the rind and soaking it in cold water before grating.

Layer and serve

  1. Spread a layer of grated coconut over the oranges.

  2. Slice the bananas into very thin, round slices and lay them in a single layer on top of the coconut.

  3. Repeat the layering process until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of coconut heaped high.

  4. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar and garnish the base with banana slices.

  5. Serve immediately, as the oranges toughen in the wine.

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 body, juice and fresh citrus flavour in each layer.
Pale sherry
Moistens the oranges and adds a mellow, aromatic wine flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the fruit and dissolves into its juices, balancing the citrus acidity.
Grated coconut
Adds texture and a light, tropical flavour between the fruit layers.
Red bananas
Add soft sweetness and creamy body to the layers.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Citrus fruit soaked in wine softens and then toughens as it stands, so the oranges lose their fresh texture if the dish waits too long before serving.

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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