Skip to main content
Dessert

Banana Trifle

A layered dessert of bananas, lemon jelly, apricot jam, liqueur, whipped cream, almonds, and ratafias.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Banana and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Banana Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the banana base

  1. Pass the bananas through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the apricot jam to the bananas.

  3. Add the cooled lemon jelly to the bananas.

  4. Add the Maraschino or Curacao liqueur to the bananas.

  5. Dissolve the gelatine in one tablespoon of water. Mix the dissolved gelatine with the other ingredients.

  6. Add a few drops of carmine to brighten the color.

  7. Pour the mixture into a deep dish.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds. Shred the blanched almonds. Bake the shredded almonds until brown. Let the baked almonds cool completely.

Finish with cream

  1. Whip the cream until stiff. Sweeten the whipped cream to taste with caster sugar. If desired, flavor the whipped cream with Maraschino or Curacao.

  2. Pile the whipped cream lightly on top of the jellied mixture. Sprinkle the almonds over the surface. Garnish the base with ratafias.

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. Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Banana + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Pureed into the base, giving body, sweetness and flavor to the jelly layer.
Gelatine
Sets the banana mixture so it holds its shape when spooned.
Cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms a light, airy topping over the base.
Lemon jelly
Adds set body and bright citrus flavor to the banana mixture.
Apricot jam
Adds fruity sweetness and body to the banana base.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff. Cream must be whipped to stiff peaks so it holds its shape on top of the base; under-whipped cream slumps and sinks into the jelly, while over-whipping can turn it grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, banana, apricot, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, banana, apricot, almond. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes