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Dessert

Banana Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, water, baking powder, vanilla, milk, cornstarch, butter, and sliced bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the powdered sugar, flour, water, baking powder, and vanilla until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the milk, cornstarch, and 1 egg in a double boiler.

  2. Cook until thickened, then stir in the sugar, butter, and vanilla.

  3. Once the filling is done, fold in the sliced bananas.

Assemble

  1. Layer the cake with the banana filling.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 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
Beaten into the batter to give structure and help the cake set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a stable custard-style filling.
Milk
Provides moisture and body to the custard filling.
Bananas
Add moisture, sweetness and banana flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when heated enough to swell its starch granules. Stopping early leaves a thin filling that will run out of the layers, while overcooking can make it stiff or scorch on the bottom of the double boiler.

Swap the banana

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

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

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