Name: Bermuda Witches
Ingredients: 6 slices of rice, pound, or sponge cake (⅙ inch thick); Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly; Fresh grated coconut; Small sprigs of myrtle for garnish

Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Bermuda Witches

Ingredients

6 slices of rice, pound, or sponge cake (⅙ inch thick)
Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly
Fresh grated coconut
Small sprigs of myrtle for garnish

Directions

Prepare

Trim the brown edges off the cake slices.
Spread half of the slices with jelly.
Sprinkle grated coconut over the jelly.
Press the remaining cake slices on top.
Trim the edges for a neat appearance.

Serve

Arrange the slices in a pile on a white napkin.
Garnish with small sprigs of myrtle.

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.

Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,063 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Guava + coconuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Rice + guavatop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together15 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Guava + myrtletop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Coconut + myrtletop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cake slices: Provide the layered base that holds the jelly and coconut together.
Jelly: Adds sweetness and moisture that soaks into the cake and binds the layers.
Fresh grated coconut: Adds texture and a chewy, sweet filling between the cake layers.

“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.