Skip to main content
Dessert

Banana Pudding

A banana pudding made by baking sliced bananas with butter, red currant jelly, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the bananas lengthwise and lay them in a dish.

  2. Dot the bananas with bits of butter.

  3. Add the red currant jelly and lemon juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Baste until the bananas are cooked and look clear.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Banana + red curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a sweet, tender base when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the bananas brown lightly in the pan.
Red currant jelly
Melts into a glossy, sweet-tart glaze that coats the bananas.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the jelly.

The step that matters

Baste until the bananas are cooked and look clear. Bananas soften quickly under heat and their sugars can scorch if left too long. Basting with the melted butter and jelly keeps the surface moist and coats the fruit evenly, so the glaze sets clear and glossy rather than dark or dry.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, red currant, lemon):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, red currant, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes