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Dessert

Banana Nutora

A steamed custard made from mashed bananas, peanut butter, water, sugar, cornstarch, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and peanut work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Nutora

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and mash the ripe bananas with a silver fork.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed bananas, peanut butter, water, sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Mix well and beat for 5 to 10 minutes.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into cans.

  2. Steam the cans for 3 hours.

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. Banana + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

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

  2. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe bananas
Mashed bananas add moisture and natural sweetness to the custard.
Peanut butter
Adds fat and rich peanut flavor, helping the custard set smooth and creamy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the custard its firm, sliceable body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory, nutty peanut butter.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture for 5 to 10 minutes. Thorough beating fully disperses the cornstarch and peanut butter so no lumps remain. Cornstarch only thickens properly once it is evenly distributed and heated, so an unevenly mixed batter can steam into a grainy or patchy custard.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Peanutthe original
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, butter, sugar. 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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