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Dessert

Cream Banana Cake

A moist banana cake topped with a sugar glaze and thin banana slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Banana Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth, then gradually add the sugar and beat until light and creamy.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  3. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and flavor with almond or vanilla extract.

  5. Beat the entire mixture for 10 minutes.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes.

  2. For the icing, boil 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of water until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  3. Slowly pour the syrup over the beaten egg white, beating until cool.

  4. Spread a layer of icing on the cake, followed by a layer of thinly sliced bananas, then another layer of icing.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  5. Almond + bananatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg whites
Beaten to add air and lift, giving the cake a lighter, airier texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the beaten egg white. The syrup must reach the soft ball stage and be poured slowly while beating. Pouring too fast can cook or deflate the egg white, so the icing fails to thicken into a stable, spreadable foam.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg, almond. 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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