Desserts · Puddings & mousses

Banana pudding

Name: Banana pudding
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 2/3 cup granulated sugar; 3 tbsp cornstarch; a pinch salt; 3 cups whole milk; 3 yolks egg yolk; 2 tbsp butter; 2 tsp vanilla extract; 4 bananas, sliced; half a box vanilla wafers; 1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped

The Southern potluck legend: vanilla custard from scratch, layered with bananas and wafers that soften into cake overnight. The waiting is an ingredient.

Time: 35 min (25 prep + 10 cook)
Servings: 8
Per serving: 392 kcal
Protein: 6 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

Custard

2/3 cup granulated sugar130 g
3 tbsp cornstarch24 g
a pinch salt1 g
3 cups whole milk720 g
3 yolks egg yolk51 g
2 tbsp butter30 g
2 tsp vanilla extract8 g

4 bananas, sliced400 g
half a box vanilla wafers200 g

Topping

1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped120 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Whisk the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a saucepan, then the milk and yolks. Cook over medium, whisking always, until it thickens to pudding — about 8 minutes.
Off the heat: butter and vanilla.
Layer in a dish: wafers, bananas, warm custard; repeat. Warm custard is deliberate — it starts softening the wafers immediately.
Chill at least 4 hours, overnight for the true texture. Whipped cream over the top, and a few crushed wafers if any survived.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Concentrated sugar, with little protein or fiber to slow it down; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

6% of kcal

59% water

3 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

49%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 3138 kcal goes into the pot, 1684 g of ingredients comes out as ~1500 g of food → 209 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 209
Protein: (6%); 3 g
Fat: (40%); 9 g
Carbohydrates: (54%); 28 g
of which sugar: 20 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 103 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.