Name: Chess Cakes
Ingredients: 1 coconut, peeled and grated; 1 pound sugar; ⅔ pint water; ¼ pound butter; 7 egg yolks; Rich pastry for lining patty pans

Why it works: Coconut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chess Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Boil sugar in water for 15 minutes.
Stir in grated coconut and boil for another 15 minutes.
While warm, mix in butter and beaten egg yolks.

Bake

Line patty pans with rich pastry and fill with the mixture.
Bake until golden.

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.

Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,742 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut: Provides the main flavour and bulk of the filling, with moisture from its grated flesh.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and, boiled with water, forms a syrup that binds the coconut.
Egg yolks: Enrich and set the filling, giving it a custard-like richness and structure when baked.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture in the filling.