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Dessert

Ambrosia

A fruit salad of sliced oranges, powdered sugar, coconut, and optional 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 ↓

Ambrosia

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the oranges and slice them.

  2. Layer the sliced oranges in a deep glass dish.

  3. Sprinkle a thick layer of powdered sugar over the oranges.

  4. Add a layer of grated fresh coconut on top of the sugar.

  5. Repeat the layers of oranges, sugar, and coconut until the dish is full.

  6. Finish with a layer of coconut on top.

  7. Pour a glass of sherry wine over the entire dish, if desired.

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. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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 bulk of the dish and its fresh, juicy, acidic flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dish and draws moisture from the oranges, forming a syrup.
Grated fresh coconut
Adds texture and a mild, sweet, nutty flavor between the fruit layers.
Sherry wine
Adds a subtle aroma and depth to the fruit and syrup.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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