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Dessert

Baxaxa Cream

A frozen banana dessert made with bananas, sugar, cream, brandy, lemon juice, isinglass, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Baxaxa Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the banana pulp

  1. Remove the skin from the bananas and pound them in a mortar with the sugar until you have a pulp.

Make the cream base

  1. Beat the cream until it forms stiff peaks.

  2. Add the pounded bananas, brandy, and lemon juice to the whipped cream and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the isinglass in a little boiling water, then gently whip it into the mixture.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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

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

  2. Banana + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provide the main flavour and a soft, creamy body once pulped.
Cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it gives the ice cream its light, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pulp and helps keep the frozen mixture softer.
Isinglass
A gelatine-like agent that stabilises the mixture and gives a smoother set.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and lowers the freezing point so the texture stays softer.

The step that matters

Gently whip in the isinglass. Isinglass must be fully dissolved in hot water before it is added, and folded in gently. Lumps or over-beating can deflate the whipped cream and leave uneven texture after freezing.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, sugar, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, cream, brandy. 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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