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Dessert

Banana Sponge

A light banana sponge cake made with gelatin, sugar, egg whites, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and mash the bananas.

  2. Soak the gelatine in water.

Make the mixture

  1. Once soaked, add the sugar and heat gently until the gelatine dissolves.

  2. Let the mixture cool until nearly cold.

Whip and set

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Add the mashed bananas and whisk well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold that has been chilled in cold water.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 body, moisture and sweet banana flavour of the cake.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and make the cake light and sponge-like.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps dissolve the gelatine when heated gently.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture until nearly cold before adding the bananas and egg whites. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so if the mixture is too cold it can stiffen and fail to blend evenly with the bananas and whites. Cooling only until nearly cold keeps it fluid enough to combine smoothly while preserving the airy foam from the whipped whites.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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