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Dessert

Banana Sundae, No. 3

A dessert of ice cream topped with vanilla syrup and banana slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Sundae, No. 3

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place a scoop of ice cream in a dish.

  2. Drizzle the vanilla syrup over the ice cream.

  3. Top with several slices of banana.

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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Vanilla + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Syrup + bananatop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Ice cream
Provides the cold, creamy base that the other toppings sit on.
Vanilla syrup
Adds sweetness and vanilla flavour, and soaks slightly into the ice cream.
Banana
Adds fresh fruity sweetness and a soft texture against the cold ice cream.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, vanilla, syrup):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vanilla, syrup. 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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