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Dessert

Banana Sponge

A gelatin-based banana dessert with nuts, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and nuts work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry ethyl decanoate, which smells grape, waxy. The science ↓

Banana Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes.

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, stir and cook the banana pulp, lemon juice, and sugar until boiling, then add the gelatine.

  2. Place the mixture in ice water.

  3. When the mixture begins to set, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Place the mold on ice.

  3. Sprinkle with the chopped nuts before serving.

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 + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Banana pulp
Adds banana flavour and body to the mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they lighten the mixture and add airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the lemon juice's tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the banana flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites at the right moment. Egg whites must be stiffly beaten and folded in only once the mixture begins to set. If it is too warm, the foam collapses and the airy texture is lost; if it is too firm, the whites will not blend evenly.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, lemon, egg, 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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