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Dessert

Banana Salad

A chilled dessert of sliced bananas topped with sweet sherry, lemon juice, whipped cream, syrup, orange zest, and sliced oranges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Slice the bananas lengthwise into thick slices.

  2. Arrange the slices on a dish to form a hollow square.

  3. Pour the sweet sherry mixed with lemon juice over the bananas.

  4. Chill until ice cold.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the thick white syrup over the bananas.

  2. Add the lemon juice and dissolve the orange zest in the syrup.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the center with whipped cream piled high.

  2. For a non-alcoholic version, prepare the bananas as above.

  3. Fill the hollow center with sliced oranges.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Form the base of the salad, providing the main body and sweetness.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, soft texture to the filled centre.
Sweet sherry
Adds aroma and a sweet, fruity flavour to the bananas.
Sugar
Dissolved in water to make the syrup, adding sweetness to the dish.
Sliced oranges
Add fresh citrus flavour and acidity to the filling.

The step that matters

Chill until ice cold. Bananas soften and discolour quickly at warm temperatures, so chilling firms them and keeps the salad fresh-tasting before serving.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sherry, cream, syrup, sugar, orange. 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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