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Dessert

Banana Tart

A baked pastry filled with a banana, lemon, milk, cream, and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Rub the bananas through a sieve.

  2. Mix the bananas with the grated rind and juice of the lemon and some flavored syrup.

  3. Beat the eggs, then add the milk and cream, and stir into the banana mixture.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main flavor and a soft, smooth body to the filling.
Eggs
Set the filling during baking, giving it a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, diluting the filling so it bakes creamy.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny center, while overbaking can make the filling dry and grainy or cause it to crack.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, milk, sugar, syrup, egg, cream. 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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