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Dessert

Banana Blancmange

A sweet custard made with milk, cornflour, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla, and sliced bananas, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk, then add the sugar and blended cornflour.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Let it cool, then add the beaten egg yolks and stir over low heat until thickened.

  5. Add the thinly sliced bananas and vanilla essence.

  6. Pour the mixture into a wetted mold.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the mixture when stirred over low heat.
Bananas
Provide the main flavour and soft texture in the set blancmange.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot, so keep the heat low and stir constantly until it thickens.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

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