Name: Banana Cream
Ingredients: 1 quart rich milk; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract; 1 cup heavy cream; 2 cups banana pulp; 1 cup sugar; Juice of 1 lemon; Juice of 1 orange; 1 junket tablet

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 cream

Make a plain junket cream according to package instructions.
When the cream is partly frozen, beat in the banana pulp, lemon juice, and orange juice, then remove the beater.
Let the cream ripen.

Garnish and serve

Cut tiny balls from firm bananas using a French vegetable cutter.
Roll the balls in lemon juice and powdered sugar.
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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,430 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

Rich milk: Forms the base of the cream, which the junket tablet sets into a soft custard.
Heavy cream: Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture through its fat.
Banana pulp: Provides the main banana flavor and body that thickens the cream.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the citrus juices.
Junket tablet: Contains rennet, an enzyme that makes the milk set into a cream.

Swap the lemon

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

Strawberryfits better
Peachfits better
Figfits better
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.