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Dessert

Banana Cream

A chilled dessert made from milk, vanilla, junket, banana pulp, citrus juices, and sweetened cream, garnished with banana balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Banana Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Make a plain junket cream using the milk, vanilla, and junket tablet.

Add the banana

  1. When the cream is partly frozen, beat in the banana pulp along with the lemon and orange juice.

  2. Remove the beater and let the cream ripen.

Garnish and serve

  1. Cut tiny balls from firm bananas using a French vegetable cutter, then roll them in lemon juice and powdered sugar.

  2. Serve the cream in glasses, garnished with the banana balls.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  5. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 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

Junket tablet
Contains rennet that sets the milk and cream into a soft, custard-like body.
Banana pulp
Supplies the main banana flavour and a smooth, thick texture to the cream.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel and a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep banana pieces from browning.

The step that matters

Beating in the banana pulp while the cream is partly frozen. The cream must be only partly set so the pulp mixes in evenly; if it is fully firm or too liquid, the banana will not blend smoothly and the texture will be uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vanilla, cream, banana, sugar, orange, junket. 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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Pie 11Cake 8Ice Cream 4Filling 3 See all 53 →

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