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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A chilled gelatin-based dessert made with mashed bananas, sugar, ginger, walnuts, milk, and whipped cream.

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

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 cup of cold milk for 15 minutes.

  2. Mash the bananas until smooth.

  3. Mix in the chopped ginger and walnuts, then add the sugar.

Make the pudding

  1. Pour boiling milk over the gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  2. Add the banana mixture to the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Set the bowl in a can of crushed ice or cold water, stirring occasionally until it begins to firm.

  4. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

  5. Pour into a mould rubbed with sweet oil.

Serve

  1. Once firm, turn out and serve with whipped cream.

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. Ginger + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Banana + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together206 recipes

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

  5. Banana + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together508 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Bananas
Provide the main flavour and a soft, smooth body when mashed.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a creamy texture when folded into the set-in-progress mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the bananas and ginger.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine dissolves and sets in.

The step that matters

Set the bowl in ice or cold water, stirring occasionally until it begins to firm. Gelatine sets as it cools, so the mixture must firm only to a point where the whipped cream can be folded in without deflating. Cooling too slowly or too fast can leave the texture uneven or the cream collapsing into the pudding.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, walnut, 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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