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Dessert

Fruit Cream

Fruit Cream is a chilled dessert made with mashed bananas, orange pulp and juice, lemon juice, powdered sugar, gelatin, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fruit Cream

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit base

  1. Mash the bananas in a bowl.

  2. Add the orange pulp, orange juice, lemon juice, and powdered sugar. Mix well.

Add the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin over boiling water.

  3. Add the dissolved gelatin to the fruit mixture.

Chill and serve

  1. Cool the mixture in ice water.

  2. Wait until the mixture thickens.

  3. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

  4. Place the mixture on ice.

  5. Serve cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Mashed to give the cream its body and natural sweetness and flavour.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture so it thickens and holds its shape when chilled.
Whipped cream
Folded in to add lightness, richness and a softer, airy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the fruit mixture and dissolves easily into the mashed fruit.
Oranges
Add juice and pulp for citrusy acidity and fresh fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin over boiling water. Gelatin must fully dissolve before it is added, or it forms lumps and sets unevenly. Chilling too far before folding in the cream can also make the mixture set in clumps, so it should only thicken slightly.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, gelatin, cream. 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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