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Dessert

Banana and Apple Jelly Filling

A sweet filling made from apple jelly, egg white, sugar, and sliced bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana and Apple Jelly Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine apple jelly, egg white, sugar, and sliced bananas in a deep dish.

  2. Beat the mixture with a wire whisk until light and foamy.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between layers of cake and 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. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + bananatop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apple jelly
Provides sweetness and fruit flavor, and helps the filling hold a soft, spreadable body.
Egg white
Whips into foam when beaten, lightening the filling's texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.
Bananas
Add fruit flavor and soft texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Beating until light and foamy. Egg white only becomes light and foamy when beaten enough to trap air. Stopping too early leaves a dense filling, while sugar added to the whites helps the foam hold its shape.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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