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Ice Cream

A custard ice cream flavored with sliced bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Ice Cream

Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, combine the milk and sugar and heat until scalding hot.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg yolks, stirring continuously.

  3. Return to the boiler and cook until it thickens to a soft custard consistency.

Finish and freeze

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the sliced bananas.

  2. Cool thoroughly and then freeze.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with heat, giving the ice cream its creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard is built on, providing moisture and creaminess.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Bananas
Add banana flavour and sweetness, and contribute moisture and body to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the egg yolks, stirring continuously. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the yolks warm gently and thicken smoothly into custard.

Swap the banana

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

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

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