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Dessert

Orange and Banana Custard

A custard dessert made with cake slices, orange, banana, milk, eggs, sugar, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange and Banana Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Layer the dish

  1. Arrange slices of cake in the bottom of a deep dish.

  2. Slice half an orange and one banana over the cake.

  3. Repeat the process until the dish is filled.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour a custard made of milk, eggs, and sugar over the fruit.

  2. Top with whipped cream and serve cold.

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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Eggs set the custard and give it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Milk forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the custard and balances the tartness of the orange.
Cake
Cake slices form a soft base that soaks up the custard.
Banana
Banana adds sweetness and a soft, moist texture between the layers.
Orange
Orange adds bright acidity and a fresh aroma to the layers.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, 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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