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Dessert

Banana Snow

A gelatin dessert made with bananas, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Snow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatine.

  3. Add granulated sugar and lemon juice, then stir well.

  4. Strain into a large bowl to cool quickly.

Finish and set

  1. Once cool, stir in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gently fold in the sliced bananas.

  3. Pour into molds to cool, avoiding excessive stirring after adding bananas.

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. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whip into foam that lightens the texture and gives the snow its airy body.
Bananas
Add flavour and soft body to the set dessert.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the base and helps balance the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dish.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites and bananas gently. Beaten egg whites hold air only while they stay unbroken, so overmixing deflates the foam. Once the gelatine begins to set, vigorous stirring also breaks up its structure, so the mixture should be folded gently and poured promptly.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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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