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Dessert

Fig and Banana Mousse

A chilled mousse made from figs, bananas, powdered sugar, whipped cream, ice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fig and Banana Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice equal quantities of figs and bananas.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Freeze and serve

  1. Place in a mold half full of whipped cream.

  2. Pack in ice and salt for two hours before serving.

  3. Serve with or without cake.

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. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Add sweetness and a soft, jammy texture to the mousse.
Bananas
Add moisture and a soft, creamy body to the fruit layer.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and trapped air, giving a light, creamy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the fruit and dissolves quickly into its juices.

The step that matters

Pack in ice and salt for two hours. Salt lowers the freezing point of the ice, so the surrounding mixture gets cold enough to freeze. Keeping the packing for the full two hours lets the mousse set firm.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, 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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