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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Fried banana slices coated in batter, served with sugar.

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

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice bananas lengthwise.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice; let stand for 1 hour.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, egg, milk, and salt to make a batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each banana slice in the batter.

  2. Fry in hot fat until brown.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + milktop 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 the main filling, sweetness, and moisture inside the fritter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that coats and crisps around the fruit.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the flour into a coating batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and slows browning of cut bananas.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. Fat that is hot enough sets the batter quickly into a crisp coating. If the fat is too cool, the batter soaks up oil and turns greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the banana

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

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

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