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Dessert

Creamed Bananas

Bananas topped with whipped cream and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Creamed Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the bananas.

  2. Sprinkle them with ¼ cup sugar.

Make the topping and serve

  1. Whip the heavy cream until very light.

  2. Whip the egg white to a stiff froth.

  3. Combine the whipped cream, egg white, and 1 tablespoon sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture over the bananas.

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

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

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

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

  4. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Form the base fruit, providing natural sweetness and soft texture under the topping.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a light, airy body when whipped into the topping.
Egg white
Whipped to a foam, it lightens the topping and gives it an airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and topping, and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Whip the egg white to a stiff froth. Egg white foams hold air because its proteins unfold and trap bubbles. Underwhipping leaves the topping runny and flat, while overwhipping makes it dry and grainy, so the foam should stand in firm peaks before folding it in.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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