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Dessert

Okange and Banana Pudding

A fruit pudding made with sliced bananas and oranges, sweetened with sugar, thickened with corn starch and egg yolks, and cooled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Okange and Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Layer sliced bananas and oranges in a dish, sprinkling more than half the sugar on top.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it just comes to a boil.

  2. Mix the corn starch with the remaining sugar and the beaten egg yolks in a bowl, adding a little milk to combine.

  3. Stir this mixture into the boiling milk and cook until it thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the thickened mixture over the fruit and let it cool before serving.

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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Banana + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the pudding its set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets around the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and draws juice from the fruit as it rests.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Corn starch needs to reach a boil to swell and thicken fully. Stirring constantly keeps the egg yolks from scrambling on the hot base, which would leave lumps and a grainy texture.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, banana, milk, corn, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, milk, corn, egg. 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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