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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A dessert made with gelatin, sugar, milk, bananas, and cream.

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup of cold water.

  2. Scald the sugar and milk together in a saucepan.

  3. Thin the gelatine with a little of the hot milk, then strain it and add the rest of the milk.

  4. Let the mixture simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.

  5. Pour into a bowl and let cool.

Add bananas and serve

  1. Peel and cut the bananas into small pieces, then stir them into the cooled mixture.

  2. Serve with whipped cream, sweetened if desired.

  3. Make this a day in advance to allow it to set.

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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and milk 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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives a soft, creamy body.
Bananas
Add banana flavor, aroma and sweetness.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, fluffy texture when whipped.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the bananas. Gelatine sets as it cools, so the base must be cool enough to handle but still liquid when the bananas are stirred in. Adding fruit to a very hot mixture can dull its color and soften the fruit.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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