Why it works: Banana and pepper work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 483 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓
Sliced Bananas Stuffed Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Slice the bananas.
Hard boil the eggs, then peel and slice them in half.
Remove the yolks and mix with salt, pepper, and mayonnaise.
Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.
Top with sliced bananas before serving.
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.
-
Banana + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together483 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
-
Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,920 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
-
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Swap the banana
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper):
- Lemonfits better
- Limefits better
- Mangofits better
- Bananathe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
You might also like
The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes