Name: Chess Cakes
Ingredients: 1 coconut, peeled and grated; 1 pound sugar; ½ pint water

Why it works: Coconut and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,742 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Chess Cakes

Ingredients

1 coconut, peeled and grated
1 pound sugar
½ pint water

Directions

Prepare

Peel and grate the coconut.

Cook

In a pot, combine the sugar and water, and boil for 15 minutes.
Stir in the grated coconut and boil for an additional 15 minutes while warm.

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 + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,742 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut: Provides the bulk, moisture and chewy texture of the finished mixture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and, as the syrup boils down, body and thickness.

“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.