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Dessert

Baked Bananas, Sultana Sauce

A baked banana dessert served with a sweet sultana sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Bananas, Sultana Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine sultana raisins, butter, boiling water, vanilla, sugar, sherry, and corn starch.

  3. Stir until well mixed and let it sit for a few minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Peel the bananas, loosening the pulp from the skin, and remove any coarse threads.

  2. Place the bananas back in their skins and pour the sultana sauce over them.

  3. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until heated through.

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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sherry + bananatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 the main body and sweetness, and soften into a tender filling when baked.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body rather than a thin syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it taste rounded alongside the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until heated through. Bananas soften quickly in the oven and can collapse if overbaked. Cornstarch only thickens the sauce once it gets hot, so the sauce must be heated through to set properly.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vanilla, sugar, sherry, corn, banana):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vanilla, sugar, sherry, corn, banana. 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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