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Dessert

Banana Float

A dessert of gelatin, milk, sugar, bananas, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Banana Float

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Float

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Boil the milk and sugar, then remove some to finish dissolving the gelatine.

  3. Once dissolved, return the mixture to the pot and boil for 10 minutes.

Set and finish

  1. Let it cool but not stiffen, then stir in the cut bananas.

  2. Set the mixture on ice or in a cool place.

  3. An hour before serving, whip the cream until stiff, flavor and sweeten to taste, then pour around the banana mixture.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the milk mixture into a soft, sliceable body as it cools.
Rich sweet milk
Provides the creamy liquid base and body of the float.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and balances the flavor of the milk and bananas.
Bananas
Add banana flavor and soft fruit texture throughout the set mixture.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a light, airy whipped topping around the banana mixture.

The step that matters

Let it cool but not stiffen. If the gelatine mixture cools too far before the bananas are stirred in, it sets too firmly to mix evenly. Stirring while it is still pourable keeps the bananas distributed through the set dessert.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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