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Dessert

Banana Custard

A custard made with milk, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, sugar, and cornstarch in a saucepan.

  2. Heat over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

  3. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  4. Temporarily add a small amount of the hot mixture to the eggs, stirring constantly.

  5. Pour the tempered egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook for a few more minutes until thick.

  6. Remove from heat and let the custard cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Slice the bananas thinly and place them in a serving dish.

  2. Pour the cooled custard over the sliced bananas.

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. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when heated and cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds body to its flavour.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as their proteins set during gentle cooking.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture by swelling with heat to give a smooth body.
Bananas
Provide fruity flavour and sweetness as the base layer under the custard.

The step that matters

Temper the eggs. Adding hot mixture to the eggs slowly, while stirring constantly, raises their temperature gradually. Without this, the eggs can scramble in the hot liquid instead of thickening the custard smoothly.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg. 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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