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Dessert

Chartreuse of Bananas

A molded banana dessert with gelatin, cream, pistachios, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chartreuse of Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Line the mold

  1. Line a plain souffle tin with clear jelly.

  2. Cut 3 bananas into thin slices.

  3. Dip each banana slice in jelly to line the mold.

  4. Fill the spaces between the banana slices with blanched and chopped pistachio nuts.

  5. Set the pistachio-filled spaces with a little jelly.

Make the mousse

  1. Prepare the banana puree.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in cold water.

  3. Add sugar to the gelatin mixture.

  4. Whisk the cream until half stiff.

  5. Mix the banana puree, dissolved gelatin, and lemon juice into the cream.

  6. Add the mixture to the cream and stir until nearly set.

  7. Turn the mixture into the lined mold.

Set and serve

  1. Once set, dip the mold in warm water and turn out.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Banana + pistachiotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the mousse so it holds its shape when turned out.
Cream
Whipped to add lightness and a rich, smooth texture.
Banana puree
Provides banana flavour and body to the mousse.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet banana flavour.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the mousse and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until nearly set. If the gelatin is added to the cream when it is too warm or too cold, it can set in lumps or fail to set evenly. Stirring until nearly set, before pouring, lets the mousse hold air and fill the mold smoothly.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, cream, sugar, pistachio, nuts):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cream, sugar, pistachio, nuts. 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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