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Dessert

Banana and Strawberry Cream

A chilled dessert made from mashed bananas, strawberry jam, whipped cream, and optional color, garnished with ice wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and strawberry jam work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Banana and Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the banana mixture

  1. Skin and mash the bananas.

  2. Mix in enough strawberry jam to flavor well.

  3. Add cochineal for color and a few drops of lemon juice.

Combine and serve

  1. Whip the cream carefully and lightly.

  2. Mix the whipped cream with the banana mixture.

  3. Pile the mixture on a glass or silver dish.

  4. Arrange pink and white ice wafers around the dish.

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 + strawberry jamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

  4. Cream + strawberry jamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes
  5. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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 body and sweetness of the dish as a mashed base.
Thick cream
Whipped to add lightness and a rich, creamy texture.
Strawberry jam
Adds concentrated fruit sweetness and strawberry flavor to the mashed bananas.
Lemon juice
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the flavor and slows browning of the banana.

The step that matters

Whip the cream carefully and lightly. Overwhipped cream turns grainy and can separate, while underwhipped cream stays loose. Stopping at soft peaks keeps it smooth enough to fold into the banana mixture without deflating it.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, cream, strawberry jam. 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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