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Dessert

Banana Cake

A moist cake made with mashed bananas, sugar, butter, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, flour, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the mashed bananas and beaten eggs, stirring well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk or cream and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the flour and chopped nuts.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in a loaf pan or in three layers.

  2. Assemble with your choice of filling.

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. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Bananas
Add moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the crumb soft and tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk or cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour milk or cream
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that contributes to a tender texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk or cream. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it fully in the sour dairy before mixing spreads the reaction evenly, so the cake rises without patches of soda or a bitter taste.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, banana, egg, milk, 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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