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Dessert

Banana Salad

A banana salad with a peanut butter and egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and peanut work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Cut bananas in half and leave them in their skins.

  2. Chop peanuts finely and spread them on top of the bananas.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix melted butter with egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add sugar, salt, white pepper, and mustard; beat together.

  3. Stir in lemon juice and cook in a double boiler until thick, being careful not to let it curdle.

  4. Let the dressing cool, then pour it over the bananas.

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 + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

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

  2. Peanut + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a smooth, creamy emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and offsets the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Bananas
Provide the sweet, soft fruit base that the dressing is poured over.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing in a double boiler. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but too much heat scrambles them and the dressing curdles. A double boiler keeps the temperature low and even, so the custard becomes thick and smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, peanut, butter, egg, sugar, mustard, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, peanut, butter, egg, sugar, mustard, lemon. 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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