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Dessert

Banana Cake

A cake made with butter, cornstarch, sugar, milk, baking powder, and sliced bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Add the cornstarch, baking powder, and milk, mixing until smooth.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into two layers and bake until golden.

  2. While warm, place sliced bananas between the layers.

  3. Ice the cake.

  4. Serve fresh.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich in flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when creamed, traps air that helps it rise and lighten.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb by diluting gluten, giving a finer, more tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and set light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the starches so the batter flows and bakes evenly.
Sliced bananas
Add natural sweetness, moisture, and banana aroma between the layers.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beating sugar into butter creates tiny air pockets that expand in the oven. Stopping early leaves a denser cake with less lift.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

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