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Dessert

Banana Cake

A moist banana cake made with mashed bananas, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together five times.

Make the batter

  1. Add 1 cup of the sifted flour to the mixture, then add the remaining flour and the milk.

  2. Fold in the mashed bananas and the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten stiff and folded in, lighten the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Gluten forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps the cake brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Mashed bananas
Add moisture, sweetness and banana flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

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