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Dessert

Frozen Banana Pudding

A chilled dessert made by freezing a mixture of milk, cornstarch, sugar, mashed bananas, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Frozen Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix cornstarch, sugar, and salt with a little cold milk until smooth, then add to the hot milk.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cooled, add the skinned and mashed bananas through a wire strainer.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice just before freezing.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Mashed bananas
Add banana flavour and body to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens its icy texture when frozen.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the banana flavour and helps keep it from browning.

The step that matters

Cook the custard for the full 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture is cooked long enough to gelatinize its starch. Stirring prevents scorching and lumps, and an undercooked base stays thin and may not set well after freezing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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