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Dessert

Banana Float

A chilled dessert of milk, gelatin, bananas, and flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Banana Float

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Float

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Boil the milk with sugar.

  3. Take enough hot milk to dissolve the gelatin, then combine with the rest of the milk and boil for 10 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Let the mixture cool until not stiff.

  2. Break the bananas with a fork and stir them into the mixture.

  3. Chill in the refrigerator.

  4. Serve with flavored cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Gelatine
Sets the milk mixture into a wobbly, sliceable float as it chills.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the float and carries the gelatine.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the mild flavor.
Bananas
Add banana flavor and soft fruit pieces to the set mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until not stiff. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so bananas added while the mixture is already firm will not distribute evenly. Cooling only until it is still pourable lets the fruit mix through before the gel forms.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cream. 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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