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Dessert

Banana Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made from bananas, lemon juice, curaçao, custard, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Peel the bananas and rub them through a sieve into a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice and curaçao, then stir in the custard.

Freeze and serve

  1. Whip the heavy cream and fold it into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a freezer and freeze according to the usual method.

  3. Serve in a pile, in cups, or mold it if preferred.

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

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

  2. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Ripe bananas
Provide the main flavour and a smooth, sweet body once sieved.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the bananas from browning.
Curaçao
Adds orange aroma and flavour to the banana base.
Custard
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the base.
Heavy cream
Whipped into the mixture to add fat, lightness and a softer frozen texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream. Whipped cream holds air that gives the ice cream lightness. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate it and make the frozen result denser.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, cream. 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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