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Banana Pudding Meringue

A baked banana pudding topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Pudding Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolk with sugar and salt.

  3. Add orange juice and milk, then pour over bread crumbs and banana slices in a deep baking dish, layering them alternately.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks, then add sugar, orange juice, and grated rind.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown in the oven for a few minutes.

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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Enriches the custard and helps it set into a soft, creamy texture when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and egg mixture to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the egg yolk to form the custard.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms the light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg white to stiff peaks. Egg white must be whipped until it holds firm peaks without becoming dry or grainy, so the meringue stays light and airy. Underwhipped whites will deflate and weep, while overwhipped whites turn grainy and hard to spread.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

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