Name: Another Receipt for Cocoa-nut Gingerbread
Ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose flour; 1 cup ground rice; ¾ ounce ground ginger; zest of 1 lemon; 5 ounces butter; 5 ounces sugar; 1 cup treacle; 6½ ounces grated coconut; optional: 2 ounces candied orange or lemon rind, chopped

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Cocoa-nut Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the flour and ground rice together.
In a saucepan, combine the treacle, butter, and sugar, and heat until melted.
Pour the hot mixture over the flour and rice mixture.
Let the paste cool, then stir in the grated coconut and optional candied rind.
Mix well until fully combined.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,063 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ginger + coconuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,168 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, rice, ginger, butter, sugar, coconut, orange):

Vanillafits better
Mangofits about as well
Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rice, ginger, butter, sugar, coconut, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.