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Dessert

Banana Float

A chilled gelatin dessert with bananas, sweet milk, cream, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Banana Float

Why it works: Banana and vanilla 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 Float

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the sweet milk and sugar together.

  3. Dip out a little boiling milk and stir it into the gelatin, then mix this back into the rest of the milk.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

Add the bananas and chill

  1. When cool, stir in the bananas that have been broken into pieces with a silver fork and mix thoroughly.

  2. Set the mixture on ice.

Finish and serve

  1. An hour before serving, sweeten the cream to taste and flavor with vanilla.

  2. Whip it well.

  3. Put the frozen banana mixture into a glass dish or bowl.

  4. Top with the whipped cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Gelatin
Sets the milk mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy body of the float.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk mixture and softens the set texture.
Bananas
Add banana flavor and soft fruit pieces to the set mixture.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a light whipped topping.

The step that matters

Dip out a little boiling milk and stir it into the gelatin. Gelatin clumps if it meets very hot liquid directly, so tempering it with a little hot milk first helps it blend smoothly before returning to the pot.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gelatin, milk, sugar, cream, vanilla):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, milk, sugar, cream, vanilla. 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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