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Dessert

Frozen Bananas

Frozen bananas are sliced, sweetened, chilled, and optionally folded with whipped cream.

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 ↓

Frozen Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the bananas crosswise into very thin slices.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the water and grated lemon peel until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Place the mixture in the freezer and freeze as you would ice cream.

  5. If desired, fold in whipped cream before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 flavor and body, and their sugars soften into a smooth, scoopable texture when frozen.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves into the banana juices, adding sweetness that also keeps the frozen result from freezing too hard.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a creamier, lighter texture to the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Letting the sugar stand with the bananas. The hour of standing draws juice out of the banana slices and lets the sugar begin dissolving into it. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves grainy sugar and a less smooth frozen texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, 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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