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Dessert

Banana Cake

A layered cake with banana filling, lemon zest, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together gradually.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks.

  4. Add the sifted flour mixed with baking powder alternately with the milk.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  6. Divide the batter into two cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the banana filling

  1. For the banana filling, press the banana pulp through a sieve to fill a cup.

  2. Mix in the sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and unbeaten egg white.

  3. Beat until the mixture is solid to the bottom of the bowl, about 20 minutes.

  4. Use the banana filling between the two cakes and on top.

Decorate and serve

  1. Mix confectioner's sugar with lemon juice and water to a smooth paste for the topping.

  2. Decorate with candied cherries.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter and stiffly beaten whites lighten it for structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Banana pulp
Adds moisture and banana flavour to the filling between and on top of the cakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the batter as it is combined with the flour.

The step that matters

Beating the banana filling until solid. The filling must be beaten long enough to thicken and hold its shape between the cakes. Under-beating leaves it runny, so it soaks into the sponge instead of staying as a layer.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour, egg, butter, lemon. 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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