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Dessert

Bananas Stewed

Stewed bananas simmered in brown sauce with lemon, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bananas Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas and place them in boiling water with a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes or until soft.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare the brown sauce as directed, adding lemon juice, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Drain the bananas, place them on a dish, and pour the sauce over them.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Banana + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together483 recipes

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

  3. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Green bananas
Starchy flesh that softens into a tender, spoonable texture when boiled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the bananas pale.
Brown sauce
Supplies the savoury body and colour that coats the cooked bananas.

The step that matters

Boil until soft. Green bananas are firm and starchy, so they need the full boiling time to turn tender. Testing for softness with a fork or knife before draining prevents serving them hard in the middle.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sauce, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sauce, pepper. 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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