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Dessert

Banana Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from milk, eggs, sugar, cream, and sliced bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a steamed custard by combining milk, eggs, and sugar in a heatproof bowl over simmering water.

  2. Stir until thickened, then cool the custard.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cold, mix in the cream and sliced bananas.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving the base structure and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs thicken.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture of the ice cream.
Bananas
Add banana flavor, sweetness, and body to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Thicken the custard gently. Egg proteins set at moderate heat. If the custard gets too hot or is heated too fast over the water, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy. Stir steadily until it coats the spoon, then cool it fully before adding the cream.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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