Name: Cocoanut Bread Pudding
Ingredients: ½ cup desiccated coconut; 1½ cups boiling milk; 1½ cups bread; Flavoring to taste

Why it works: Coconut and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Bread Pudding

Ingredients

½ cup desiccated coconut
1½ cups boiling milk
1½ cups bread
Flavoring to taste

Directions

Soak the desiccated coconut in boiling milk for 40 minutes.
Add the soaked coconut to the bread pudding mixture, using three times the amount of bread as coconut.
Flavor the mixture to taste.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,648 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Coconut + breadtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together112 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).