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Dessert

Fritters of Bananas

Fritters made from sliced bananas dipped in batter and fried, served warm with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fritters of Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a batter according to your preferred recipe.

  2. Peel the bananas and cut them lengthwise into 3 or 4 slices. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over each slice.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the banana slices in the batter.

  2. Fry the slices in hot lard until they are a nice golden brown.

  3. Drain the fritters carefully and arrange them in pairs on a serving dish.

  4. Sprinkle with sifted sugar and serve warm.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the batter that coats the banana and crisps as it fries.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown around the fruit.
Bananas
Provide the soft, sweet filling inside the crisp coating.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the coated slices in hot lard. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy before it sets. Hot fat sets the coating quickly and browns it, while the banana softens inside.

Swap the banana

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

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

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