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Dessert

Banana Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with milk, sugar, eggs, flour, bananas, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and sugar.

  3. Add a little cold milk to the flour mixture.

  4. Add the egg yolks to the flour mixture.

  5. Combine the boiling milk with the flour mixture.

  6. Stir until thickened.

  7. Allow the mixture to cool slightly.

  8. Fold in the sliced bananas.

Make the meringue and serve

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  2. Add the confectioners sugar.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the meringue on top of the pudding just before serving.

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. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + bananatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing liquid that thickens with starch and yolk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Flour
Thickens the custard by swelling in hot liquid, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the flavor of the bananas.
Bananas
Provide the main fruit flavor and soft texture within the pudding.
Egg white
Beaten into a stiff foam to form the light meringue topping.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Flour starch needs to be heated fully while stirring to swell and thicken; undercooked starch leaves a thin, pasty custard, while overheating can scramble the egg yolks.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, flour. 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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