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Banana Blanc Mange

A custard-like banana dessert thickened with cornstarch and folded with whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Banana Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve cornstarch in cold water.

  2. Bring milk to a boil, then add the dissolved cornstarch.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens.

Finish the mousse

  1. Add sugar and bananas that have been pressed through a sieve.

  2. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg white.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  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).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the cornstarch thickens.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set texture slightly.
Bananas
Add banana flavour and body to the thickened base.
Egg white
Whipped air bubbles lighten the mousse and give it volume.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly whipped egg white. Whipped egg white traps air that gives the mousse its lightness. Stirring vigorously or folding for too long knocks that air out, so the mousse turns dense and flat.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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