Name: Bermuda Witches
Ingredients: Savoy cake or pound cake, sliced ⅙ inch thick; Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly; Fresh grated coconut; Myrtle sprigs for garnish

Why it works: Guava and coconut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bermuda Witches

Ingredients

Savoy cake or pound cake, sliced ⅙ inch thick
Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly
Fresh grated coconut
Myrtle sprigs for garnish

Directions

Slice the cake into pieces no thicker than ⅙ inch and remove the brown edges.
Spread half of the slices with Guava jelly or your choice of jelly.
Sprinkle grated coconut evenly over the jelly.
Press the remaining cake slices on top and trim into a neat shape.
If the slices are large, divide them and arrange them slopingly in the center of a dish.
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.

Guava + coconuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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).