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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried dough snack made with bananas, eggs, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, milk, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is similar to cookie dough.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut each banana in half lengthwise.

  2. Roll the dough around each banana half, pinching the ends to seal.

  3. Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown.

  4. Remove and roll in powdered sugar before serving.

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

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + bananatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
Flour
Forms the dough that wraps around the bananas and holds its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the dough puff and turn light inside.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown in the hot fat.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dough can be worked into a soft, pliable dough.
Bananas
Provide the sweet, soft filling that cooks through inside the fritter.

The step that matters

Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy before the outside sets. Hot fat seals the crust quickly, so the fritter browns and stays light.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, 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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