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Dessert

Bananas and Dates

A simple dessert of sliced bananas and dates served with whipped cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and dates work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Bananas and Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely slice the bananas and dates.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream or plain custard.

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 + datestop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

  3. Dates + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture.
Dates
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, 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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