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Dessert

A Delicious Dessert

A chilled banana dessert made with sugar, heavy cream, brandy, lemon juice, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

A Delicious Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the skins from the bananas and mash the fruit.

Make the mixture

  1. Whip the cream to stiff peaks and fold in the mashed bananas.

  2. Add the brandy, lemon juice, and dissolved gelatin, mixing well.

  3. Beat gently for a few minutes, then pour into a mold.

Set and serve

  1. Cool in the refrigerator until set.

  2. Serve with additional 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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Banana + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main fruit flavour and body, and sweetness as they are mashed into the dessert.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and fat, and whipped to stiff peaks it gives the dessert a light, airy texture.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture as it cools, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon and brandy.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm alcoholic note to the dessert.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved gelatin and beat gently. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before it is added, or it can form lumps and set unevenly. Once the cream is folded in, beating too hard knocks out the air trapped by the whipped cream, leaving a dense rather than light set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, cream, brandy, gelatin. 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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