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Dessert

Bananna Souffle

A chilled banana dessert with sweet sherry, sugar, lemon juice, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and sherry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Bananna Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Slice the bananas lengthwise into thick slices.

  2. Arrange the slices on a dish, forming a hollow center.

Dress and chill

  1. Mix the sherry, sugar, and lemon juice together.

  2. Pour the sweet sherry mixture over the bananas.

  3. Chill until ice cold.

Finish and serve

  1. Fill the center with whipped cream, piling it high.

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. Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Bananas
Provide the main body and sweet, soft texture of the dessert.
Sweet sherry
Adds aromatic flavor and moisture that soaks into the banana slices.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sherry and lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and slows browning of the banana.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy topping in the hollow center.

The step that matters

Chill until ice cold. The sherry mixture needs time to soak into the banana slices and the dessert must be cold so the whipped cream holds its shape when served.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sherry, 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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