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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas are sliced bananas coated in egg and flour, then deep‑fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bananas in half lengthwise.

  2. Dip each half in the beaten egg.

  3. Roll the egg-coated bananas in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the oil in a pan until boiling hot.

  2. Carefully drop the bananas into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove with a slotted spoon and serve folded in a white napkin.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 sweet, soft filling that is revealed under the crisp coating.
Beaten egg
Binds the flour to the banana surface so the coating adheres during frying.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that crisps and browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden. Oil that is very hot sets the flour quickly, so the bananas brown before they soften.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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