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Dessert

Banana Shortcake

A cake made with bananas, custard filling, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks.

  3. Mix in the sifted flour and baking powder, alternating with the milk.

  4. Pour the batter into a square cake pan.

  5. Bake until done.

Assemble and top

  1. Slice the bananas in half lengthwise, then slice them into quarters.

  2. Place the banana pieces on top of the cake.

  3. Cover the bananas with a thick custard filling.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding ¼ cup sugar to make meringue.

  5. Pipe the meringue on top of the cake.

  6. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter, and the whites whip into the meringue.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and stays light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes evenly.
Bananas
Add moisture, sweetness and fruity flavor to the layered cake.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks without deflating; grease or leftover yolk prevents proper foaming, and the meringue will weep or collapse if under-whipped or sugar is added too early.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, flour, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

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

“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.

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