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Dessert

Oranges — Continued

A chilled dessert of sliced oranges layered with grated coconut, caster sugar, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and coconut 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 ↓

Oranges — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Peel the oranges and trim off all the white pith with a sharp knife.

Layer and chill

  1. Slice the oranges and layer them in a glass dish, alternating with grated coconut and caster sugar.

  2. Strew more grated coconut on top and pour sherry over the oranges.

  3. Chill the dish on ice for 1-2 hours before serving.

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. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Coconut + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Orange and sugar 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

Oranges
Provide the main body, juice and fresh citrus flavour of the dessert.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a warm, wine-like note that complements the citrus.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the oranges and draws out some of their juice as it sits.
Grated coconut
Adds sweetness, a chewy texture and a toasty, tropical aroma.

The step that matters

Trimming the pith. White pith is bitter, so removing it fully keeps the orange slices tasting clean and fresh rather than sharp and astringent.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, sherry. 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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