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Dessert

Banana Parfait

A chilled dessert made with mashed bananas, rum, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and rum work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel and mash the bananas to a pulp.

  2. Add the rum, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and yellow vegetable coloring to the bananas.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and then mix in the sugar.

Whip and combine

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Whip the heavy cream until stiff.

  3. Combine the banana mixture with the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the whipped cream and egg whites.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and pack it in equal parts ice and salt for 4 hours.

  2. If desired, omit the liquor and freeze for 3 hours instead.

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. Banana + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 a smooth, pulpy body for the parfait.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and thicken the base, while whipped whites add airy lightness.
Heavy cream
Whipped into stiff peaks, it adds richness and a creamy, light texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilize the egg yolk mixture.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol keeps the frozen texture softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet banana flavor.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped cream and egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped cream and egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving the frozen parfait dense rather than light.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, rum, sugar, egg, 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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