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Dessert

Banana Croquettes

Banana croquettes are fried banana halves coated in crumbs, sweetened with powdered sugar and flavored with orange juice and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas and cut them in half crosswise.

  2. Make a straight cut on the ends and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. Dip the bananas in orange juice and essence of ginger.

  4. Puncture the bananas with 5 or 6 holes to allow the flavor to penetrate.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the bananas in the biscuit or cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without sauce.

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. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Ginger + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

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

  4. Banana + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together206 recipes

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

  5. Banana + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the soft, sweet filling that becomes tender when fried.
Biscuit or cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cut ends and helps them brown in the fat.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fruity brightness that balances the sweetness.
Essence of ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the bananas.

The step that matters

Frying in deep hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it crisps. Hot fat seals the coating quickly, keeping the banana inside soft and the outside crisp.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, ginger, egg, wheat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, ginger, egg, wheat. 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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