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Dessert

Birdie's Banana Shortcake

A banana shortcake with orange rind and juice, topped with cream or beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Birdie's Banana Shortcake

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 dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour and baking powder.

  3. Cut in shortening and add milk until moist.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake until golden brown, then cool.

  2. Slice the bananas and mix with orange juice, grated orange rind, and sugar.

  3. Split the cake, spread with butter, and fill with the banana mixture.

  4. Top with cream or beaten egg white.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

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

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the shortcake as the starch sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Shortening
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and short rather than tough.
Bananas
Provide moisture and sweetness to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor where it is spread on the split cake.

The step that matters

Cut in shortening and add milk until moist. Cutting the fat into the flour leaves it in small pieces that keep the crumb tender. Adding too much milk or overworking the dough develops gluten and makes the shortcake tough.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, banana, sugar, butter, 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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