Name: Bermuda Witches
Ingredients: 6 slices of rice, pound, or Savoy cake (⅙ inch thick); Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly; ½ cup grated fresh coconut; Optional: French rolls and currant jelly (red or white) for serving

Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Bermuda Witches

Ingredients

6 slices of rice, pound, or Savoy cake (⅙ inch thick)
Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly
½ cup grated fresh coconut
Optional: French rolls and currant jelly (red or white) for serving

Directions

Prepare

Trim the brown edges off the cake slices.
Spread half of the slices with jelly.
Sprinkle grated coconut over the jelly.
Press the remaining cake slices on top to form a stack.
Trim the edges for a neat appearance.
If large, divide the stack into smaller slices.

Serve

Arrange the slices on a white napkin and garnish with myrtle sprigs.

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.

Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,063 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Guava + coconuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Guava + curranttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Rice + guavatop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together15 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Rice + curranttop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together497 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Cake slices (rice, pound, or savoy): Forms the base layers that hold the jelly and coconut together in a stack.
Jelly (guava, or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant): Adds sweetness and moisture, and makes the layers stick together.
Grated fresh coconut: Adds texture and a light, chewy contrast between the cake layers.