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Dessert

A Banana Dessert

Layered dessert of sliced bananas, macaroons soaked in sherry, whipped cream, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and sherry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

A Banana Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the bananas.

  2. In a serving dish, layer sliced bananas, then layer macaroons dipped in sherry and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

  3. Add a layer of whipped cream.

  4. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used.

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 + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroons
Soak up the sherry and add a soft, cake-like texture between the layers.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture that moistens the layers.
Bananas
Add fruity sweetness and a soft, tender texture to each layer.

Swap the banana

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

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

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