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Dessert

Junket with Puree of Bananas

A chilled dessert of banana puree mixed with gelatin, served with plain junket and sweetened cream.

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 ↓

Junket with Puree of Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

  1. Peel and slice the bananas.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with the water and cook slowly until tender.

  3. Press the cooked bananas through a sieve to make a puree.

Set and serve

  1. Add lemon juice, orange juice, sugar, and gelatin soaked in cold water to the puree.

  2. Stir until the gelatin is dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture into sherbet glasses and chill.

  4. Once chilled, fill the glasses with plain junket and serve ice-cold with sweetened cream.

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

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

  4. Sugar + junkettop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Junket + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main flavour and body of the puree.
Gelatine
Sets the banana puree so it holds its shape when chilled.
Plain junket
Adds a soft, milky layer that finishes the dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must dissolve completely into the warm puree; any undissolved granules will leave a grainy or rubbery texture once chilled and can prevent the dessert from setting evenly.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, junket, 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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