It’s time for the second round of the They go really well together food blogging event (hereafter referred to as TGRWT #2). Ingredients to pair this time are banana and parsley, which should be an easy match compared to last round with coffee, chocolate and garlic. Deadline is June 1st, so there’s still a couple of weekends left for you to do some experimental cooking. The event and round-up is hosted by Tara over at Should you eat that, so check out her post with instructions on how to participate!
I’ve tried to track down the origin of this pairing. First place I saw it mentioned was by Heston Blumenthal at eGullet, and in an interview with The Independent Heston explains how he discovered it:
He gives an example of this creative process in action. “I was cooking rabbit stew for the kids last summer in France, lifted the lid and threw in chopped parsley and got a smell of banana.” Which prompted him to pair banana with parsley, and banana with tarragon. “It worked really well.”
I have found odour activity values (OAV) for parsley, but not for banana. A search at The good scents company reavels that (Z)-3-hexen-1-yl formate and linalool are present in both banana and parsley. When comparing the OAV data of parsley with a search for banana only at The good scents company oct-1-en-3-one and (Z)-hex-3-enyl acetate were also found. Please post a comment if you have more data on the volatile compounds of this pairing and their OAV values.
I can imagine banana being far easier to match with tarragon than parsley. I may well give that a try instead
Where are you finding the chemical analyses for these? And are they strictly aromatics, or do they cover all of the components?
Not just because I’m interested in new food pairings, but also because I’m trying to track down what compound avocado, banana and latex might have in common.
Google’s scholar search is getting better and better (and it’s free). Otherwise a href=”https://scifinder.cas.org/”>SciFinder, Crossfire Beilstein and ISI Web of Knowledge are good search engines. At least one of these is generally available at university libraries.
Having found an interesting article, the next problems is that open access publishing isn’t very widespread yet, so you’ll either have to buy the article or visit the nearst university library which might hold a subscription.
My previous post on “Searching for flavour pairings” might also help you.
I have recently discovered that I have an allergy to avocados. This allergy seems to be connected to allergies to latex and bananas. I don’t care for bananas, and so haven’t eaten enough to know if I have a reaction to it, but I have shown a minor sensitivity to latex. I’m trying to find out what the commonality might be. Both and and a friend of mine who is a doctoral student in biology are have trouble finding the information we want.
Thanks for the help!
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