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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A baked banana cake layered with a thickened milk and egg custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Beat the eggs with salt for 5 minutes.

  2. Add sugar to the eggs and beat the mixture well.

  3. Mix flour with baking powder, then stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture.

  4. Gradually stir in boiling water.

  5. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until done.

  6. Slice the cake.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, eggs, and cornstarch.

  2. Cook the mixture until thickened.

  3. Flavor the filling.

Layer and serve

  1. Layer the cake with banana slices in a pudding dish until two-thirds full.

  2. Pour the filling over the layered cake and bananas.

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

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + bananatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Provide structure in the cake and thicken the custard as they set with heat.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as its starch and proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and turns light.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding richness and body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard as its starch swells and sets when heated.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, and eggs can curdle if overheated. Stop cooking once it is thick and smooth.

Swap the banana

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

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

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