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A Dessert of Mixed Fruit

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 ↓

A Dessert of Mixed Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the oranges and remove all the white skin.

  2. Cut the oranges into thin slices and layer them in a glass dish.

  3. Sprinkle a layer of sugar over the oranges.

  4. Add a layer of freshly grated coconut.

  5. Add a layer of thinly sliced bananas.

  6. Repeat the layers, starting with oranges and finishing with coconut.

  7. Pour any juice from the oranges over the dessert.

  8. If desired, add a glass or two of sherry.

  9. Serve very cold.

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. Banana + sherrytop 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

Swap the orange

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

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

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

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