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Dessert

Iced Cream, Raxana

A chilled banana-based dessert made with cream, gelatin, and liqueur.

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 ↓

Iced Cream, Raxana

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Skin the bananas and place them in a lined saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in ½ cup of water.

  3. Add the dissolved gelatin to the saucepan along with the lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar.

  4. Simmer the mixture for about 10 minutes, then let it cool.

Finish the mixture

  1. Beat the cooled mixture with the cream.

  2. Flavor the mixture with the liqueur.

Freeze

  1. Wet a mould, then pour the cream mixture into the mould.

  2. Set the mould to freeze.

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Bananas
Provide the main body, natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, light mouthfeel.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape and stays firm when frozen.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and keeps the frozen texture softer.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before beating in the cream. If the mixture is still warm, the cream can thin and lose its body, and the gelatine may begin to set unevenly. Cooling first keeps the cream thick and the gelatine evenly distributed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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