Name: Bermuda Witches
Ingredients: Savoy cake or rice cake, sliced ½ inch thick; Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly; Fresh grated coconut; Myrtle sprigs for garnish

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

Savoy cake or rice cake, sliced ½ inch thick
Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly
Fresh grated coconut
Myrtle sprigs for garnish

Directions

Prepare the cake

Slice the cake into pieces no thicker than ½ inch.
Remove the brown edges from the slices.

Assemble the sandwiches

Spread half of the slices with Guava jelly or your choice of jelly.
Sprinkle grated coconut over the jelly.
Press the remaining slices on top to form a sandwich.
Trim the edges for a neat appearance.
If large, cut the slices into smaller pieces.

Serve

Arrange the slices in the center of a flat white napkin.
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.

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).
Rice + guavatop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together15 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Savoy cake or rice cake: Provides the light, porous base that soaks up the jelly and holds the sandwich together.
Guava jelly or fine strawberry, raspberry, or currant jelly: Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and moistens the cake layers between the slices.
Fresh grated coconut: Adds a soft, chewy texture and mild sweetness between the layers.

“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.