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Dessert

Banana Custard

A custard made with milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, salt, and ripe bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk until it begins to boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Stir in the vanilla and salt.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat and gradually stir in the egg mixture.

Cool and finish

  1. Allow the mixture to cool.

  2. Fold in the sliced bananas.

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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the custard its creamy body.
Egg
Its proteins set when gently heated, thickening the custard and giving it structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the custard.
Bananas
Add fruity flavour, sweetness and soft texture to the finished custard.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the egg mixture into the milk off the heat. Egg proteins begin to set around cooking temperature, so adding the egg mixture to very hot milk all at once can scramble it. Adding it gradually, off the heat, tempers the egg and keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, vanilla. 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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