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Dessert

Banana Brown Betty

A baked dessert of sliced bananas layered with butter, sugar, pineapple pickle, bread crumbs, cinnamon, and optional whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Brown Betty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Layer sliced bananas in a buttered dish.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar, butter, and chopped pineapple pickle (or marmalade or jelly).

  4. Add a layer of bread crumbs sprinkled with cinnamon.

  5. Repeat layers, finishing with a layer of bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly until heated through.

  2. For an improvement, whip the egg whites with 2 tablespoons sugar, spread on top, and brown quickly in the oven after cooking.

  3. Serve hot with cream, if desired.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sliced bananas
Provide the main fruit body and soft, sweet flavour that fills the dish.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and butter, giving the layers body and a soft, absorbent texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs and fruit brown gently as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fruit juices thicken into a syrup.
Chopped pineapple pickle with syrup or orange marmalade or guava jelly
Adds sharp, fruity acidity and concentrated sweetness that cuts through the bananas.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, butter, sugar, pineapple, bread, egg, cream. 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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