Name: Orange Cocoanut
Ingredients: 1 fine ripe coconut, peeled, washed, and grated; ½ cup pulverized sugar; 5 large ripe oranges, peeled and sliced

Why it works: Coconut and orange work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Orange Cocoanut

Ingredients

1 fine ripe coconut, peeled, washed, and grated
½ cup pulverized sugar
5 large ripe oranges, peeled and sliced

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix the grated coconut with the pulverized sugar.

Layer and serve

Cover the bottom of a glass bowl with a layer of sliced oranges.
Add a layer of the coconut mixture on top of the oranges.
Repeat the layers of orange and coconut until the bowl is full.
Finish with a heaping layer of coconut on top.

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 + orangetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,742 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and orange 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

Coconut: Adds texture and a mild, sweet flavour that contrasts with the juicy oranges.
Pulverized sugar: Sweetens the coconut and dissolves into the juices from the oranges.
Oranges: Provide moisture and bright acidity that balance the sweetness of the sugar and coconut.