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Baked Bananas

Baked bananas topped with a sweet lemon sauce and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked Bananas

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix sugar, corn starch, and salt.

  2. Add boiling water and stir until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut bananas into quarters.

  2. Butter a baking dish and layer in the banana quarters.

  3. Pour the sauce over the bananas.

  4. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  5. Top with a thin layer of buttered bread crumbs.

  6. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  4. Corn + bananatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 soft, sweet flesh that softens and bakes into the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce brown as it bakes.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the bananas instead of running off.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet sauce and balances its flavor.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce smooth before adding lemon juice. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in the boiling water and then thickened, or it forms lumps and the sauce stays thin. Removing it from heat before adding the acidic lemon juice keeps the sauce's thickening stable and its flavor bright.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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