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Banana Kale Smoothie

This is such a delicious and protein-rich start to my day. It’s also great as an afternoon pick-me-up!

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Why it works: Banana and kale work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and 29 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 1
Prep5 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, peanut (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Add the milk or plain yogurt, peeled banana, torn kale pieces, peanut butter and honey to a blender.

  2. Add the optional ground flax seed, optional shredded coconut and optional cocoa powder to the blender if using them.

  3. Add the crushed ice on top of the other ingredients.

  4. Blend on high for about 1 to 2 minutes until completely smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides as needed.

  5. Taste and blend briefly again if you want it sweeter or thicker, then pour into a glass and serve right away.

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Banana + kaletop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Peanut + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  5. Banana + honeytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, milk, kale, peanut, butter, honey, cocoa powder):

  1. Vanillaabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, milk, kale, peanut, butter, honey, cocoa powder. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).