Name: Banana Pudding
Ingredients: sponge cake; bananas; eggs; sugar; wine

Why it works: Banana and wine work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 244 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the sponge cake into slices.
In a glass dish, layer the sponge cake and sliced bananas alternately.
Make a soft custard and flavor it with a little wine, then pour it over the layers.
Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and heap them over the entire dish.

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.

Banana + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together244 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,920 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9,581 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).