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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A steamed or baked pudding made with bananas, sugar, flour, butter, eggs, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Stir in the flour and add the cream or milk.

  4. Thinly slice the bananas and mix them in.

Bake and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold.

  3. Steam or bake for 1 to 1½ hours for a large pudding, or 30 to 35 minutes for small ones.

  4. Serve with fruit syrup or sweet 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Bind the batter and set into a firm, custard-like structure when cooked.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and smooth texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a soft, tender texture.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness, aroma and moisture to the pudding.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter for a softer result.

The step that matters

Folding in the whisked egg whites. Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks trap air that makes the pudding light. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a dense pudding.

Swap the banana

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

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

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