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Dessert

Banana Charlotte

A chilled gelatin dessert with mashed bananas, egg whites, sugar, milk, lemon juice, whipped cream, and sponge fingers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water.

  2. Beat the egg whites slightly, add the castor sugar, and gradually pour in the boiling milk.

  3. Cook over hot water until thickened, then add the gelatine and sugar, stirring until dissolved.

Set and assemble

  1. Place in a cold area or on ice until it begins to set.

  2. Add the mashed bananas and lemon juice, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Fold in the whipped cream.

  4. Line a plain mold with trimmed sponge fingers, pour in the mixture carefully, and leave until set.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the custard and bananas into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Thicken the milk custard and add lightness to the set dessert.
Bananas
Provide the main flavour and body, thickening the mixture as it cools.
Milk
Forms the custard base that carries the gelatine and bananas.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the mixture.
Sponge fingers
Form the outer lining that gives the charlotte its shape and structure.

The step that matters

Adding the gelatine before the custard cools enough. Gelatine must be fully dissolved into a warm, not hot, custard and then cooled to partial set. If it is added too hot or too cold, it may not mix evenly or may set in lumps, and the fold-in of cream will be uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, egg, sugar, milk, cream. 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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