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Dessert

Banana Ceeam

A gelatin dessert made with bananas, milk, sugar, eggs, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Banana Ceeam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Soak gelatine in sweet milk.

  2. Place in a double boiler and cook until dissolved.

  3. Beat sugar and egg yolks together.

  4. Add the mixture to the milk.

  5. Stir until cooked.

  6. Remove from heat.

Finish and set

  1. Once cooled, add the beaten egg whites, whipped cream, and sliced 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard, adding richness and body as they cook.
Egg whites
Beaten in at the end to add airy lightness to the cream.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and softness, giving a light, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour of the bananas.
Bananas
Provide the banana flavour and a soft, fruity texture.

The step that matters

Stir until cooked. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Heat gently and stir constantly until it coats a spoon, then remove from heat promptly.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, cream, sugar. 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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