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Banana Relish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Banana Relish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In the center of an individual serving plate, place a scalloped lemon cup filled with lemon juice and sugar.

  2. Arrange a border of parsley around the lemon cup.

  3. On the outside of the parsley, arrange a ring of banana slices.

  4. Garnish with additional parsley.

  5. Serve very cold.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Parsley + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, parsley):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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