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Dessert

Baked Bananas

Baked bananas are bananas baked until the skins blacken, then peeled, dusted with powdered sugar, pistachios, and drizzled with currant jelly.

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

Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Baked Bananas

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel back a section of the skin from each banana and loosen the pulp from the skin.

  2. Remove any coarse threads from the pulp and return it to the skin.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the prepared bananas in an agate pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the skins are blackened and the pulp is softened.

  2. Carefully remove the pulp from the skin without damaging its shape and bend it into a half circle.

  3. Place the bananas in a serving dish and sprinkle with powdered sugar and finely chopped blanched pistachio nuts, or pour currant jelly 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.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Banana + pistachiotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Banana + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  4. Banana + curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bananas
The pulp softens and sweetens during baking, while the blackened skin serves as a natural container.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine dusting on the warm bananas.
Blanched pistachio nuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor as a finishing garnish.
Currant jelly
Melts into a sweet, tart sauce that coats the warm bananas.

The step that matters

Carefully remove the pulp from the skin without damaging its shape. Bananas soften considerably when baked, so the pulp is fragile and can tear or collapse. Loosening it gently while still warm keeps its shape intact for bending into a half circle.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, sugar, pistachio, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, pistachio, nuts. 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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