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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Fried banana pieces coated in batter, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Let the bananas sit for an hour before cooking.

  2. Scrape off any fiber and cut them in half lengthwise.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over the bananas and sprinkle with castor sugar.

  4. Soak the bananas for a while, turning them once.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each piece into the fritter batter.

  2. Fry in deep oil until golden brown.

  3. Drain on a paper towel, sprinkle with castor sugar, and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Ripe bananas
Provide the main fruit flavour and natural sweetness, and soften as they cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet banana flavour and slows browning of the cut fruit.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the bananas and, sprinkled on at the end, adds a light crust.
Fritter batter
Forms a crisp golden coating that seals in the banana during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in deep oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly. If the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it crisps, and the banana inside overcooks.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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