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Dessert

Lady Fingers

A layered dessert of ladyfingers, sliced bananas, sherry wine, sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and sherry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Lady Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Line a bowl with lady fingers.

  2. Fill it half full with sliced bananas.

  3. Pour ½ cup of sherry wine over the bananas.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar on top.

  5. Fill the bowl with whipped cream.

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 + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Banana + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together244 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

  5. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 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

Lady fingers
Form the structure and absorb the sherry as the dessert softens.
Bananas
Add fruity flavor and moisture to the layers.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic, slightly sweet flavor and moistens the lady fingers.
Sugar
Sweetens the bananas and sherry.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy texture.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, sugar, cream. 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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