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Dessert

Bermuda Witches

A layered cake made with sliced cake, jelly, and fresh grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Slice the cake into pieces no thicker than ⅙ inch.

  2. Remove the brown edges from the cake slices.

Assemble

  1. Spread half of the slices with Guava jelly or your choice of jelly.

  2. Sprinkle fresh grated coconut over the jelly.

  3. Top with the remaining cake slices.

  4. Press down lightly to adhere.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Guava + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Rice + guavatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cake (rice cake, pound cake, or savoy cake)
Forms the base layers that hold the jelly and coconut together.
Jelly (guava, or strawberry, raspberry, or currant)
Adds sweetness and moisture, and acts as the glue between the cake layers.
Fresh grated coconut
Adds texture and a mild, sweet flavor to the filling.

Swap the guava

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, coconut):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Guavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, coconut. 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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