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Dessert

Banana Pudding

Layered banana pudding with cracker crumbs, butter, lemon, and milk, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

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.

Layer

  1. Slice the bananas crosswise and layer them in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle with cracker crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  3. Repeat the layering process, finishing with a generous layer of cracker crumbs on top.

Moisten and bake

  1. Squeeze the lemon juice over the top and moisten everything with milk.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and serve with wine sauce.

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

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

  2. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 flavor and sweetness, and soften as they bake.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the layers a soft, pudding-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the lemon's tartness.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and layers, softening the dish as it bakes.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Moistening with milk. The milk must soak evenly through the crumbs and banana layers before baking. Dry pockets stay firm and chewy, while overly wet areas stay loose and do not set properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, butter, sugar, milk. 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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