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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A batter of mashed bananas, flour, and spices fried into golden fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mash the bananas until creamy.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder into the flour and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the salt, sweet milk, sugar, and lemon juice until thoroughly combined.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Bananas
Provide moisture, sweetness, and flavour that carries through the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the hot oil.
Bread flour
Forms the main structure of the batter so the fritters hold their shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and lighten.
Sweet milk
Thins the batter to a drop consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. Oil that is hot enough sets the outside quickly and gives browning, while oil that is too cool lets the batter soak up grease and stay pale and heavy. Turning once ensures both sides cook through.

Swap the banana

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

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

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