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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A dessert made with lemonade, orange juice, cornstarch, egg whites, bananas, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Make 1 quart of strong sweet lemonade and bring it to a scalding point.

  2. Add the juice of 1 orange.

  3. Thicken with dissolved cornstarch, being careful not to make it too stiff.

  4. Once cooked, remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Set and serve

  1. Slice 2 bananas and pour into molds.

  2. Chill thoroughly and serve with 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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the hot lemonade into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in after cooking to lighten the texture and add airy structure.
Bananas
Sliced into the molds to add fruit flavor and body to the set pudding.

The step that matters

Thickening with cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens when heated and sets as it cools, so adding too much or cooking it too long makes the pudding stiff and gummy. Stop once it is thick enough to coat a spoon, since it firms further as it chills.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, banana, 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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