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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A chilled dessert made with gelatin, bananas, sugar, ginger, walnuts, milk, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1 cup of cold milk for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the gelatin and stir until dissolved.

Make the pudding

  1. Mash the bananas until smooth.

  2. Mix in the chopped ginger and walnuts.

  3. Add the sugar.

  4. Add the banana mixture to the gelatin and stir well.

  5. Set the bowl in a can of crushed ice or cold water, stirring occasionally until it begins to firm.

  6. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

  7. Pour into a mould rubbed with sweet oil.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding.

  2. Serve with 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.

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

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

  2. Ginger + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Banana + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together206 recipes

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

  5. Banana + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Bananas
Provide the main flavour and a soft, smooth body when mashed into the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit and ginger.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, giving a lighter, creamier texture to the set pudding.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour against the soft pudding.

The step that matters

Set the bowl in ice or cold water, stirring occasionally until it begins to firm. Gelatine sets only as it cools, so chilling must be gradual and stirred. If it sets in lumps or too fast, the pudding becomes uneven. Folding the cream in before it firms can deflate it.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

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