Name: Cocoa Nut Cheesecakes
Ingredients: 2 cocoa nuts; ½ pound white sugar; water

Why it works: Cocoa and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cocoa Nut Cheesecakes

Ingredients

2 cocoa nuts
½ pound white sugar
water

Directions

Pare, wash, and dry the cocoa nuts.
Grate the cocoa nuts on the flat side that adheres to the shell.
Dissolve the sugar in a little water over the fire.
Add the grated cocoa nuts to the dissolved sugar.

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.

Cocoa + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together65 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together956 recipes

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