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Drink

Banana Cup

A chilled banana drink with lemon, orange, sherry, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Rub the pulp of the bananas through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and the juices of the lemon and orange.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and let it cool in a cool place for several hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cool, stir well and sweeten to taste.

  2. Add the sherry and serve over cracked ice.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Their pulp supplies the body and sweetness that make up most of the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, rounding out the citrus flavour.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, wine-like depth to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before sweetening. Sweetness and flavour are judged more accurately once the liquid is cool, since heat intensifies sweetness and dulls aromas. Adding sherry too early would also lose its delicate aroma to the heat.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sherry, sugar. 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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