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Dessert

Cuban Bananas

Cuban Bananas are baked bananas with butter, sugar, cinnamon, jelly bits, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cuban 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Peel and cut the bananas in half lengthwise.

  3. Butter a baking dish well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the bananas in the dish to cover the bottom without crowding.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, and bits of jelly.

  3. Add another layer of bananas and sprinkle as before, adding 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Pour 1 cup of cream over the bananas.

  5. Bake for 20 minutes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Banana + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Form the soft body of the dish and release sweetness and moisture as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bananas brown lightly at the edges.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming a sauce around the bananas as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top caramelize and brown in the oven.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cinnamon, cream. 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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