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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with sliced bananas, milk, eggs, corn starch, sugar, and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Peel and slice the bananas, then lay them in a pudding dish.

  2. In a double boiler, heat the milk until hot.

  3. Stir in the corn starch and salt, cooking until thick while stirring constantly.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and ¾ cup of sugar, stirring until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites and pour the mixture over the bananas.

  2. Beat the egg whites from the remaining 2 eggs, add the powdered sugar, and spread over the pudding.

  3. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown, then serve hot or cold.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Banana + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Bananas
Provide the fruity flavor and soft texture that sits under the custard.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites add airy structure to the topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and supplies creaminess and moisture.
Corn starch
Gelatinizes when heated, thickening the milk into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the beaten whites hold their shape.

The step that matters

Cooking the thickened custard. Corn starch must be cooked with constant stirring while the milk heats; otherwise it can clump or scorch on the bottom, and the starch needs heat to fully thicken the custard.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, corn, 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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