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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A dessert made by layering sliced bananas with butter, red currant jelly, and lemon juice, then baking until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the bananas lengthwise and lay them in a dish.

  2. Dot bits of butter over the bananas.

  3. Add the red currant jelly and lemon juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Baste until the bananas are cooked and look clear.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Banana + red curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  4. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Form the main body, softening into a sweet, tender base as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the surface brown.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy glaze that thickens slightly in the pan juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the jelly.

The step that matters

Baste until the bananas are cooked and look clear. Heat softens the bananas' starch and cell walls, so they turn tender and translucent. Stop too early and they stay firm; keep going too long and they collapse into mush.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, red currant, lemon):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, red currant, lemon. 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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