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Dessert

Baked Bananas

A baked banana dessert with powdered sugar and pistachio nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pull down a section of the skin from each banana and loosen the pulp.

  3. Remove all coarse threads and return the pulp to the skin.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the bananas in a baking dish and bake until the skins are black.

  2. Remove the pulp from the skin without damaging its shape.

  3. Bend the pulp into a half circle and place it in a serving dish.

  4. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and finely chopped pistachio nuts.

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

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

  5. Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 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
Ripe bananas provide the sweet flavor and soft, moist pulp that softens and caramelizes as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a delicate finishing layer on the warm baked bananas.

The step that matters

Remove the pulp from the skin without damaging its shape. Baked banana pulp is very soft and fragile once heated. Handling it gently keeps the fruit intact so it holds the half-circle shape when served.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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