Name: Meringue Dome
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons sugar; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); almond paste (6 inches wide and 3 inches high); whipped coffee cream (or any other flavor)

Why it works: Almond and coffee work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Meringue Dome

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

3 tablespoons sugar
coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
almond paste (6 inches wide and 3 inches high)
whipped coffee cream (or any other flavor)

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix sugar with the meringue mixture until well combined.
Form a round flat meringue, 7 inches in diameter, and sift fine sugar over it.
Place it on a board in a 300°F (150°C) oven to dry on both sides.
With the remaining mixture, form a round meringue of usual size and sugar it.
Create eight small flattened meringues, slightly more than ½ inch thick.
Form eight smaller meringues and then eight even smaller ones.
Make eight final small meringues, about 1 inch wide, and mask them with small grains of sugar.
Bake the meringues in a 300°F (150°C) oven until slightly colored.
Detach them from the paper and arrange the largest upright on the dome of almond paste.
Mask the dome with some reserved meringue mixture to adhere the meringues.
Layer the second-sized meringues over the first in a fish-scale pattern.
Bake for 15 minutes to secure the meringues together.
Serve by placing the large flat meringue on a dish and building a dome of whipped coffee cream on top.
Cover the cream with the dome and top with the round meringue filled with the same cream.

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.

Almond + coffeetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together374 recipes

Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).
Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).