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Dessert

Banana Cream

A chilled dessert made with sliced bananas, sugar, cream, lemon juice, gelatin, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Banana Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the bananas.

  2. In a bowl, combine the sugar, cream, and lemon juice.

  3. Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling water.

Set

  1. Add the dissolved gelatin to the banana mixture and stir well.

  2. Chill in the refrigerator until set.

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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bananas
Provide the main flavor and body of the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and keeps bananas from browning quickly.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable texture when chilled.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully in the boiling water. Undissolved gelatin leaves grainy or rubbery specks and will not set evenly. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before it is stirred into the mixture so it distributes evenly and gels properly as it cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, cream, gelatin. 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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Pie 11Cake 8Ice Cream 4Filling 3 See all 53 →

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