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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A custard dessert made with bananas, milk, egg, and lemon juice, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel and slice the bananas.

  2. Cook the bananas in the milk until they can be easily mashed.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the custard

  1. Add the beaten egg and lemon juice to the banana mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a small pie dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the custard is set.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Bananas
Provide the main flavour and, once mashed, the body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks the bananas gently and forms the liquid base of the custard.
Egg
Its proteins set as the custard heats, giving the pudding structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the banana flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is just set. Egg proteins set as the custard heats. Removing it once just firm keeps it smooth; overbaking squeezes out liquid and makes the texture grainy.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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