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Dessert

Banana Cream

A gelatin-based dessert made with mashed bananas, cream, sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the banana mixture

  1. Mix the mashed bananas with the sugar.

  2. Whip the cream and stir in the banana mixture and lemon juice.

Add the gelatine and set

  1. Soak the gelatine in the cold water for 5 minutes, then dissolve it by placing the dish in hot water.

  2. Strain the dissolved gelatine and mix it with the banana mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and place it on ice to harden.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

  5. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 mixture into a firm, sliceable cream as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture once whipped.
Bananas
Provide the main banana flavour and natural sweetness, plus body to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully soaked and dissolved before it is mixed in. If it is lumpy or too hot, it will not set evenly, and if it is added too cold it can form strands in the cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, cream, sugar. 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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Pie 11Cake 8Ice Cream 4Filling 3 See all 53 →

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