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Drink

Banana Cup

A chilled banana drink flavored with lemon rind, lemon and orange juice, sherry, soda water, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Banana Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Rub the pulp of the bananas through a fine wire sieve.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and the juices of the lemon and orange.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and place it in a cool place for several hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cold, stir well, sweeten to taste, and add sherry and soda water.

  2. Serve with a large lump of ice.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  3. Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Their pulp gives the drink body, natural sweetness and a creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity to round out the citrus flavour.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, nutty depth to the drink.

The step that matters

Rub the banana pulp through a fine sieve. Bananas discolour quickly once cut, and pressing the pulp through a fine sieve removes fibres and lumps so the drink is smooth. Pulp that is over-ripe or left standing will darken and turn grainy.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sherry. 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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