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Dessert

Bavarois De Bananes

A chilled banana custard dessert made with milk, cornflour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and sliced bananas, set in molds.

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 ↓

Bavarois De Bananes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar to the boiling milk.

  3. Blend the cornflour with a little cold milk, then mix it with the boiling milk.

  4. Stir over heat until it thickens.

  5. Add the yolks of eggs and vanilla essence, allowing the eggs to bind.

  6. Set aside to cool.

Set and serve

  1. Peel the bananas and cut them into thin slices.

  2. Mix the banana slices with the cooled mixture.

  3. Fill one or two wetted moulds with the mixture and place them in the ice to set.

  4. When ready, immerse the mould in tepid water, turn out onto a dish, and serve with a cold fruit syrup.

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. Milk + bananatop 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 as it heats, giving the bavarois a smooth, sliceable body.
Yolks of eggs
Bind the custard and add richness and further thickening when gently heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that is thickened into the custard.
Bananas
Add fruit flavour and soft texture throughout the set mould.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and banana.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until it thickens. Cornflour only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a simmer, and it can scorch on the base if not stirred constantly. Thickened starch sets the custard firm enough to hold its shape when turned out.

Swap the banana

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

  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, vanilla, egg. 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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