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Dessert

Banana and Orange Pudding

A custard dessert with sliced bananas and oranges layered in a glass dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana and Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the bananas and oranges, then slice them thinly.

  2. Remove the seeds from the oranges.

  3. Layer the banana and orange slices alternately in a glass dish, sprinkling each layer with castor sugar.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk, then whisk in the eggs and sugar to make a custard.

  2. Flavor the custard with vanilla and let it cool.

Assemble

  1. Pour the cooled custard over the layered fruit.

  2. If preferred, use sweetened and flavored whipped cream instead of custard.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Bananas
Provide the main fruit body and soft, sweet texture in the layers.
Oranges
Add bright, acidic flavor that cuts the sweetness of the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Eggs
Thicken the milk as they set, giving the custard its structure.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the fruit layers and the custard.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs into the boiled milk. Eggs can scramble if added to very hot milk too quickly. Whisking steadily and letting the custard thicken gently keeps it smooth, since egg proteins set at higher temperatures.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, 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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