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Dessert

Banana Sherbet

A frozen dessert made with water, sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, gelatin, and sliced bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Banana Sherbet

Why it works: Lemon and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine water and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Add lemon peel, lemon juice, and softened gelatin.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in sliced bananas.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen sherbet.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Gelatine
Helps set the mixture and gives the frozen sherbet a smoother, firmer body.
Bananas
Add flavour, body and moisture to the sherbet.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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