Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Bananas

A simple oven-baked banana dessert with butter, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Baked Bananas

Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel and slice the bananas lengthwise.

  3. Place the bananas in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bananas.

  3. Bake for 10 minutes, basting with the syrup.

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. Banana + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 main body and natural sweetness that softens and turns tender when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps it coat the bananas.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it caramelize and turn syrupy in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake for 10 minutes, basting with the syrup. Basting keeps the bananas moist and coated in the buttery syrup, so they do not dry out or brown unevenly while baking.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesBanana FillingBanana Filling16 recipesBanana SherbetBanana Sherbet10 recipesBanana FloatBanana Float9 recipes