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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Fried banana pieces coated in flour, served with a boiled sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas and cut them in half.

  2. Soak the banana pieces in a syrup made of sugar and water for 1–2 hours.

  3. Drain the bananas and roll them in flour to coat well.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated bananas in hot lard until they are light brown and crisp.

  2. Boil the syrup and strain it to serve as a sauce.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main filling, becoming soft and sweet when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the soaking syrup and the sauce, and helps the coating brown.
All-purpose flour
Forms a dry coating that crisps when fried and keeps the banana pieces intact.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, producing a golden, crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Rolling the bananas in flour. The flour coating must be dry and even, since moisture drained from the soaked bananas can make it gummy or cause it to fall off in the hot fat.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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