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Dessert

Banana Salad

A chilled banana salad flavored with champagne, brandy, sugar, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Champagne and brandy work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 169 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas and slice them lengthwise.

  2. Lay the slices in a deep glass dish.

Soak and serve

  1. Sprinkle with sugar and moisten with champagne and brandy.

  2. Let stand until the sugar is dissolved and well soaked in.

  3. Cover 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. Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Banana + champagnetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Banana + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Form the main body of the salad and provide the fruity sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves into the soaking liquid.
Champagne
Moistens the bananas and adds a light, acidic, fruity flavour.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth to the soaking liquid.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, fatty texture over the fruit.

The step that matters

Letting the sugar dissolve and soak in. The bananas need time for the sugar and liquor to dissolve and penetrate the fruit. Cutting this short leaves gritty sugar and a dry, unevenly flavoured salad.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, champagne, brandy, 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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