Skip to main content
Dessert

Banana Saute on Toast

A sautéed banana dish served on toast, sweetened with sugar, lemon, and orange juice, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Banana Saute on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel and scrape off all fibers from the bananas to avoid bitterness.

  2. Cut the bananas in half lengthwise and then crosswise.

Brown the bananas

  1. Heat the drippings in a skillet and add the bananas, sprinkling with salt.

  2. Brown each side carefully, ensuring the banana juice does not burn.

Make the sauce and set it

  1. In a bowl, mix cold water with boiling water and sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add the lemon and orange juice.

  3. Grate the orange rind into the juice.

  4. Strain through cheesecloth into a mold.

  5. Add nuts if desired and chill until set.

Serve

  1. Top with whipped cream.

  2. Garnish with banana slices before serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Banana + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  5. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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
Provide the main flavor and soft, sweet body of the dish when browned.
Beef or veal drippings
Fat for browning the bananas and adding savory richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the liquid and dissolves to form the sauce base.
Lemon and orange juice
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Brown each side carefully, ensuring the banana juice does not burn.. Bananas are high in sugar, so the surface caramelizes quickly and can scorch before the inside softens. Moderate heat and a watchful eye give an even golden color without bitterness from burnt sugar.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, beef, sugar, lemon, orange, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, beef, sugar, lemon, orange, cream. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes