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Dessert

Banana and Lemon-jelly Cream

A layered dessert of lemon jelly, bananas, custard, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Banana and Lemon-jelly Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Shave the lemon rind, avoiding the white part.

  3. Steep the lemon rind and cinnamon in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the soaked gelatine, sugar, and lemon juice to the steeped mixture and stir until dissolved.

  5. Strain the mixture into shallow dishes and let it cool.

  6. Once set, cut the jelly into dice or break it up with a fork.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the jelly with sliced bananas in a glass dish.

  2. Pour cooled custard over the layers and cover with meringue.

  3. Brown the meringue on a plate, then slip it over the custard.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the jelly.
Sliced bananas
Add sweet flavour and soft texture between the jelly layers.
Meringue
Forms a light topping that browns for colour and contrast.

The step that matters

Brown the meringue on a plate, then slip it over the custard. Meringue can weep or brown unevenly if overbaked or if it is placed on hot custard. Browning it separately lets you control colour before it is set on the cooled custard.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cinnamon, cream. 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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