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Dessert

Banana Cream

A custard-like dessert made with bananas, milk, cornflour, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla.

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Put the remaining milk and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the blended cornflour and milk, and boil for about 10 minutes.

  4. Let the mixture cool slightly, then stir in the beaten egg yolks over low heat until thickened.

Finish and set

  1. Add the vanilla essence and thinly sliced bananas.

  2. Pour into a prepared mold and let cool.

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
Starch that swells when heated, thickening the milk into a smooth custard.
Egg yolks
Proteins that set on gentle heat, adding richness and further thickening the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving body and creaminess.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the custard.
Bananas
Add flavour and fruity aroma to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks over low heat. If the yolks get too hot too fast they can scramble into lumps. Cooling the mixture slightly first and keeping the heat low lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

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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