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Dessert

Bananas Fried in Butter

Bananas fried in butter and served with fried eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,536 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Bananas Fried in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the bananas into long slices.

  2. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

Cook

  1. Fry the banana slices in the butter until golden brown.

  2. Fry the eggs in the same butter until cooked to your liking.

Serve

  1. Serve the fried bananas on a hot dish, garnished with the fried eggs.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Caramelize in the butter, developing golden color and a sweeter, richer flavor when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat evenly and adds fat for frying, browning the bananas and carrying flavor.
Eggs
Set into a firm cooked white and yolk, serving as a rich topping for the bananas.

The step that matters

Fry the banana slices in the butter until golden brown. Frying over medium heat lets the sugars in the bananas caramelize and brown without burning. Too little heat leaves them soft and pale, while too much heat scorches the sugars and butter before the centers warm through.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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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