Name: Banana Cream
Ingredients: 6 bananas; sugar to taste; 1 lemon; ½ pint custard

Why it works: Banana and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Cream

Ingredients

6 bananas
sugar to taste
1 lemon
½ pint custard

Directions

Prepare

Skin the bananas and slice them.
Place the slices in a glass dish.
Squeeze the lemon over the bananas and add sugar to taste.

Assemble

Pour the boiled custard over the bananas.
For a richer flavor, use cream instead of custard.

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.

Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,134 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Provide the main body and natural sweetness of the dessert.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens flavor and slows browning of the cut bananas.
Custard: Adds a smooth, creamy layer that moistens and softens the fruit.