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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried batter of bananas, flour, and spices served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and milk 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 batter

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients together.

  2. Beat the egg until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk to the egg and combine the mixtures.

  4. Add the lemon juice and bananas that have been pressed through a sieve.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot oil and fry until golden.

  2. Drain on paper towels and serve with lemon sauce.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Bananas
Provide sweetness, moisture and flavour to the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter together while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the fritters rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter.
Milk
Loosens the batter to a pourable consistency and adds tenderness.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying at the right temperature sets the outside quickly and browns it evenly.

Swap the banana

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

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

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