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Dessert

Banana Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, boiling water, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, and crushed bananas, topped with a sugar syrup filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the butter, milk, and boiling water, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  5. Gently fold in the sifted flour until just combined.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of water until it reaches a 'hairs' stage.

  2. Pour the hot syrup onto the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  3. Add the crushed bananas and beat until smooth.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers and on the top and sides.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Beaten to hold air and give the cake its structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that stabilizes the whipped egg foam and works with the baking soda to lift the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its body and structure.
Bananas
Add moisture, sweetness and banana flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the sifted flour gently. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten and deflates the aerated egg foam, producing a tough, dense cake instead of a light, tender one.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour. 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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