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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A layered dessert of sponge cake, bananas, custard, and whipped egg whites, topped with peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Layer and make the custard

  1. Layer sliced sponge cake and sliced bananas in a glass dish.

  2. In a saucepan, heat milk, sugar, and vanilla until warm.

  3. Whisk egg yolks in a bowl.

  4. Slowly add warm milk mixture, stirring constantly.

  5. Return mixture to saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened.

  6. Stir in wine.

  7. Pour custard over the cake and bananas.

Top and serve

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread egg whites over the top.

  3. Mix peaches with sugar and let sit for a few hours.

  4. Scald peaches and cool.

  5. Add cooled peaches to the custard before serving.

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. Vanilla + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Banana + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites form the light topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets as it thickens.
Sponge cake
Soaks up the custard and provides the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Bananas
Add flavor and a soft texture that melds with the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the egg whites hold their shape.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat; if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Stirring constantly keeps the heat even and the custard smooth.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Blackberryfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

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