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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A chilled dessert made with lemonade, orange juice, egg whites, bananas, corn starch, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the lemonade to scalding point.

  2. Add the juice of the orange.

  3. Thicken with corn starch, being careful not to get too stiff.

  4. Once the corn starch is thoroughly cooked, remove from heat and whip in the egg whites.

  5. Slice the bananas and fold them into the mixture.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour into molds and chill thoroughly.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar.

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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Banana + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemonade
Provides the sweet, acidic liquid base that flavours the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot liquid into a set, smooth custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that lightens the pudding and adds structure.
Bananas
Add fruity sweetness, aroma and soft texture to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Thickening with corn starch. Corn starch must be fully cooked at heat to lose its raw starchy taste and reach full thickening power. Overcooking or adding too much can make the pudding stiff and gluey, so it should be thickened gently and only as far as needed.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, banana, corn, cream, 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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