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Dessert

Banana Cream

A chilled dessert made with mashed bananas, sugar, cream, brandy, lemon juice, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the banana mixture

  1. Pound the bananas and sugar in a mortar until smooth.

Combine and set

  1. Beat the cream to stiff peaks and stir in the banana mixture, brandy, and lemon juice.

  2. Mix well, then add the gelatin dissolved in a little boiling water.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate or place on ice until set.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  4. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it gives the dessert a light, airy, creamy texture.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture as it cools, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Bananas
Provide the main flavour and smooth pulp that forms the body of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and helps draw out and blend the banana flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in a little boiling water before it is mixed in. If it is added undissolved or allowed to cool and thicken first, it will form lumps or streaks instead of setting evenly through the cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, cream, brandy. 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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