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Dessert

Banana Float

Dessert of sliced bananas topped with custard and frothy egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Banana Float

Why it works: Banana and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,102 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Banana Float

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and custard

  1. Slice the bananas and sprinkle them with sugar.

  2. Prepare boiled custard using the yolks of the eggs.

Assemble the float

  1. Pour the custard over the bananas.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a froth and pour them on top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provides the main body and natural sweetness of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the bananas and draws out some of their juice.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their fat and proteins.
Egg whites
Beaten to a froth, they trap air to form a light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard gently. Egg yolk proteins set when heated. If the custard gets too hot or cooks too fast, the proteins tighten and curdle into grainy lumps, so it needs gentle heat and constant stirring.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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