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Dessert

Banana Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, sugar, gelatin, bananas, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat 1 quart of cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and gelatin; stir until dissolved, then strain the mixture.

Add the bananas and freeze

  1. Once cool, stir in the mashed or finely chopped bananas and lemon juice.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

Milk and egg variation

  1. Alternatively, substitute 1 quart of milk and 4 eggs for 1 quart of cream.

  2. Cook the custard until thickened.

  3. Proceed as with the full cream recipe.

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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cream
Provides fat that makes the frozen ice cream rich and smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer.
Gelatin
Helps the mixture set and stabilises its texture when frozen.
Bananas
Supply the main banana flavour and body to the ice cream.
Eggs (in the method)
Thicken the custard and add richness in the milk version.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully before straining. Gelatin must be completely dissolved in the hot cream and sugar mixture. Undissolved particles can leave a gritty or rubbery texture once the ice cream is frozen.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, gelatin, banana. 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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