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Soup

Cream of Banana Soup

A warm soup made with milk, rice stock, bananas, butter, flour, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream of Banana Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the milk and rice stock to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the salt, nutmeg, and the bananas (skinned, scraped, and mashed through a sieve).

  5. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  6. Serve with croutons.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body and smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smoother, heavier texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour and smoothing the texture.
Bananas
Provide sweetness, body and a mellow banana flavour when mashed into the soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter and flour together until smooth. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Working it smooth with the butter first lets it disperse evenly, so the thickening is lump-free.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, rice, butter, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, rice, butter, nutmeg. 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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