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Dessert

Banana Blanc Mange

A custard dessert made with milk, cornflour, bananas, sugar, vanilla, and egg yolks.

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 ↓

Banana Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Add the sugar.

  3. Wet the cornflour with a little cold milk.

  4. Stir the wet cornflour into the boiling milk.

  5. Stir over heat until it thickens.

  6. Add the egg yolks and vanilla essence.

  7. Allow the eggs to bind.

  8. Set aside to cool.

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas.

  2. Cut them into thin slices.

  3. Mix the banana slices with the cooled mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Fill into one or two wetted moulds.

  2. Place the moulds in the ice to set.

  3. Immerse the moulds in tepid water.

  4. Turn out onto a dish.

  5. 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens into a custard.
Cornflour
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, set custard as its starch gelatinises.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the custard as it cooks.
Bananas
Add fruit flavour and body through the set custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the cornflour into the boiling milk. Cornflour must be fully wet first and stirred into boiling liquid, then cooked over heat, so its starch swells evenly and thickens. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and the custard stays grainy.

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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