Skip to main content
Dessert

Oatmeal with Sliced Bananas

A baked oatmeal dessert topped with sliced bananas and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oats and banana work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 288 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Oatmeal with Sliced Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the oatmeal

  1. Boil 2 cups of water and add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of steam‑cooked oats slowly.

  3. Let it boil once.

  4. Transfer to a double boiler and cook for 30 to 60 minutes.

  5. Pour the oatmeal into molds or cups and refrigerate overnight.

Heat and shape

  1. Turn the oatmeal out onto a hot baking sheet.

  2. Heat in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until hot.

  3. If using cups, remove the centers to create a wall of oatmeal.

  4. Transfer to serving dishes.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the centers with sliced bananas.

  2. Top with a spoonful of whipped cream.

  3. Serve.

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. Oats + bananatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  3. Oats + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Steam-cooked oats
Form the bulk of the dish, thickening into a firm, sliceable oatmeal that holds its shape.
Water
Cooks the oats, hydrating the starch so they soften and thicken into a porridge.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture against the firm oatmeal.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and a light, creamy richness to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Refrigerate overnight after molding. Oatmeal sets as its starch cools and firms, so it needs time in the cold to hold its shape when turned out and heated.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, 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.

You might also like

Banana FillingBanana Filling16 recipesBanana SherbetBanana Sherbet10 recipesBanana FloatBanana Float9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes