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Dessert

Banana Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made with custard, cream, bananas, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pass the bananas through a fine sieve.

  2. Prepare the custard as directed.

  3. Whip the cream until stiff.

Assemble and freeze

  1. Once the custard is cool, add the banana pulp and lemon juice.

  2. Gently fold in the whipped cream and freeze.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Cream + bananatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Custard
Provides a rich, smooth base that gives the ice cream its body.
Cream
Adds fat and, when whipped, air that makes the ice cream light and creamy.
Bananas
Supply sweetness, banana flavour and thickness from the pulp.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stop the banana pulp browning.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the whipped cream. Whipped cream holds air that keeps the ice cream light. Vigorous stirring deflates it, so the freezer produces a dense, icy result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, banana. 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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