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Dessert

A Delicious Dessert

A whipped cream dessert with chopped banana, orange, apple, marshmallows, nuts, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

A Delicious Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Whip the cream until very stiff.

  2. Sweeten the whipped cream with confectioners' sugar and chill.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Chop the banana, orange, apple, marshmallows, and nuts.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, beat the chopped fruits and nuts into the chilled cream.

  2. Serve in sherbet cups and top with a cherry.

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. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Banana + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the dessert its light, airy body.
Confectioners' sugar
Sweetens the whipped cream and dissolves easily into it without graininess.
Marshmallows
Soften and add sweetness and a chewy texture to the cream.
Banana
Adds sweetness, soft texture and mild flavour to the cream.
Orange
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Just before serving, beat the chopped fruits and nuts into the chilled cream.. Cut fruit releases juice and can deflate whipped cream over time, so folding it in just before serving keeps the cream light and stiff.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, banana, orange, apple. 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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