Name: Banana Trifle
Ingredients: 6 small sponge cakes; 1 pint gold custard; 4 bananas; ½ pint cream

Why it works: Banana and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,180 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Trifle

Ingredients

6 small sponge cakes
1 pint gold custard
4 bananas
½ pint cream

Directions

Assemble the trifle

Layer the sponge cakes in a glass dish.
Slice the bananas and add them on top.
Pour the custard over the bananas and refrigerate until cold.

Top and decorate

Whip the cream and heap it on top of the custard.
Decorate with bananas cut into fancy shapes.

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.

Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,180 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

Sponge cakes: Form the base layer that soaks up custard and gives the trifle its structure.
Bananas: Add sweetness, soft texture and a fruity flavour between the sponge and custard.
Custard: Provides a creamy, moist layer that sets as it chills.
Cream: Whipped cream adds lightness and a rich, fatty topping.

“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.