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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried batter made with mashed bananas, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mash the bananas in a bowl.

  2. In another bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and add milk.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then fold in the mashed bananas.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove and drain on paper towels.

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. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Banana + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Ripe bananas
Provide sweetness, moisture, and flavour through the batter.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter together while it fries.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the fritters structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a drop-able consistency.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying at medium heat lets the outside brown while the centre cooks through, and the Maillard reaction browns the surface.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk. 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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