Skip to main content
Dessert

Banana Ice Cream II

A frozen dessert made from cream, sugar, bananas, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Ice Cream II

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat 1 pint of cream in a double boiler.

  2. Add sugar and stir until dissolved, then let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, add the remaining pint of cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and start freezing.

Add the banana and finish

  1. Peel the bananas, remove the centers and seeds, then mash the remaining fruit into a smooth paste.

  2. When the cream is nearly frozen, mix in the banana paste and flavor with vanilla.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness, flavour and body from the mashed fruit.

The step that matters

Mix in the banana paste when the cream is nearly frozen. Adding the banana paste too early, or to a fully frozen base, can make the mixture uneven or icy. Adding it near the end lets it blend in evenly while the texture is still soft.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla. 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.

More banana ice cream recipes

Frozen 6 See all 61 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesBanana FillingBanana Filling16 recipesBanana SherbetBanana Sherbet10 recipesBanana FloatBanana Float9 recipes