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Dessert

Banana Salad

A chilled dessert of sliced bananas topped with powdered sugar, sherry wine, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and sherry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bananas lengthwise to the thickness of a silver dollar and lay them in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle the bananas with powdered sugar.

  3. Whip the thick cream until frothy.

Assemble and chill

  1. Pour the sherry wine over the bananas, then add the whipped cream on top.

  2. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours 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. Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Banana + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together244 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

  5. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

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

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 sweet, soft fruit flavour of the salad.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the bananas and draws out some of their juice.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a light, airy topping when whipped.
Sherry wine
Adds aroma and a mellow, slightly nutty flavour to the fruit.

The step that matters

Whip the thick cream until frothy. Over-whipping cream turns it grainy and can cause it to separate, while under-whipping leaves it too thin to hold a topping. Stopping at a soft, frothy stage keeps it smooth and spoonable.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, sherry, wine. 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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