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Dessert

Banana Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, bananas, and vanilla, finished with a powdered sugar filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and banana 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, water, and vanilla extract, mixing well.

  3. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites and flour gently.

  4. Pour the batter into layers and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, beat together the powdered sugar and egg whites until smooth.

  2. Spread the filling on the cake and top with thinly 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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped foam traps air that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites so their foam holds its shape.
Bananas
Add sweet fruit flavour and moisture to the filling and top.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the cake rises evenly and stays light.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, flour, 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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