Skip to main content
Dessert

Banana Sponge Cake

A light banana dessert made with gelatin, banana pulp, lemon juice, sugar, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Banana Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine and banana

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Press enough banana through a strainer to fill a cup.

Make the mousse

  1. Cook the banana pulp with lemon juice and sugar until boiling.

  2. Add the dissolved gelatine and cool in ice water.

  3. When it begins to set, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour into glass cups when cold enough to hold its shape.

Decorate and serve

  1. Decorate with whipped cream and chopped pistachio nuts.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Banana + pistachiotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the banana mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Banana pulp
Provides the main banana flavour and moisture for the body of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the banana pulp and balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the banana flavour and keeps it fresh-tasting.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the mixture and add airy texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites when the mixture begins to set. If the gelatine has not started to set, the foam will collapse and deflate the mixture. If it has set too firmly, the whites will not blend in evenly and lumps will form.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, egg, cream, pistachio, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, cream, pistachio, nuts. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes