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Dessert

Banana Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with bananas, sugar, lemon, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bananas into rings and lay them in a dish.

  2. Soak the gelatine in water until soft.

Make the jelly

  1. In a saucepan, combine the soaked gelatine, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and, when cool, pour it over the bananas.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a wobbly jelly as it cools.
Bananas
Form the fruit base and add soft texture and natural sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Adds acidity and a bright citrus aroma from the juice and rind.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly only when cool. Pouring the mixture over the bananas once it has cooled stops hot liquid from softening or discolouring the fruit, and lets the gelatine begin to set rather than stay too thin to hold.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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