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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A custard dessert made with milk, butter, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, gelatin, bananas, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the well-beaten yolks with sugar and cornstarch.

  3. Dissolve the gelatin in 3 tablespoons of milk and add it to the egg whites, then whip into the hot milk.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once the mixture is cold, layer custard and sliced bananas in a dish, repeating until full, with custard on top.

  2. Grate the lemon rind and chop the rest of the lemon, then stir together.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its shape when chilled.
Gelatine
Sets the whipped mixture so it holds its shape when layered and served.
Egg whites
Whipped to add lightness and airy body to the pudding.
Bananas
Add fruity flavour and soft texture between the custard layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before layering. Gelatine sets as it cools, so layering while the mixture is still warm can cause the layers to slump and blend together instead of holding distinct layers.

Swap the banana

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

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

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