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Dessert

Banana Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made from custard, cream, mashed bananas, lemon juice, and Curaçao or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Banana Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pass the bananas through a fine sieve.

  2. Prepare the custard as directed.

  3. Whip the cream until stiff.

Finish and freeze

  1. When the custard is cool, add the banana pulp, lemon juice, and Curaçao.

  2. Gently stir in the whipped cream and 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. Banana + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  4. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cream + bananatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Custard
Forms the creamy, smooth body of the ice cream base.
Bananas
Provide the main banana flavour, natural sweetness, and body from the pulp.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, and whipped air makes the ice cream light.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the banana flavour and slows browning of the pulp.
Curaçao or brandy
Alcohol keeps the frozen ice cream softer and adds aroma.

The step that matters

Add the banana pulp only when the custard is cool, then fold in the cream gently. Warm custard can thin the cream and melt the mixture unevenly. Gentle folding keeps the air in the whipped cream, so the ice cream freezes light and smooth rather than dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, banana, brandy. 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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