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Dessert

Lemon Jelly and Bananas

A dessert of lemon-flavored gelatin set over sliced bananas, topped with whipped cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lemon Jelly and Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of water until soft.

  2. Shave the lemon rind and steep it in 1 pint of boiling water for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the soaked gelatine, sugar, and lemon juice to the boiling water and stir until dissolved.

Set and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and pour it over the slices of bananas.

  2. Serve with whipped cream and sugar.

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. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + bananatop 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).

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly once it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the jelly.
Bananas
Provide fruit flavour and soft texture beneath the jelly.

The step that matters

Stirring the gelatine until dissolved. Gelatine must fully dissolve in the hot liquid; undissolved granules leave gritty or weak patches once the jelly sets. The soaked gelatine should be added to hot liquid and stirred until no grains remain.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, 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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