Name: Banana Fupp
Ingredients: 7 medium bananas; Juice of 1 lemon; 1 cup shredded coconut; 1 cup sugar; 4 egg whites; ½ pint heavy cream

Why it works: Banana and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 549 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Banana Fupp

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the bananas and sprinkle with lemon juice and shredded coconut.
Chill the dish on ice for 1 hour.
Mash the bananas and pass through a fruit press or use an egg-beater.
Add 1 cup of sugar and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.
Transfer the mixture to a freezer.
When the crank begins to turn hard, add ½ pint of whipped cream.
Freeze until the consistency is mushy and serve in individual glasses.

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.

Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together549 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,134 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Pineapplefits better
Strawberryfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, coconut, sugar, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.