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Dessert

Banana Shortcake

A sweet baked cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and bananas, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift together the salt, sugar, and baking powder.

  3. Work in the butter until well combined.

  4. Beat the egg yolks. Add the milk.

  5. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

  6. Roll out the dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dough in cake pans.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes.

  3. Layer the baked shortcake with sliced bananas.

  4. Serve with cream.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  5. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that keeps the shortcake tender and rich.
Eggs
Egg yolks add richness and help bind the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the shortcake brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Work in the butter until well combined. Cold fat worked into flour in small pieces creates a tender, flaky crumb. If the butter is overworked or melted into the dough, the shortcake becomes dense and tough.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, 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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