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Dessert

Baked Bananas

Baked bananas are bananas coated in crumbs, baked, served with cinnamon‑flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Bananas

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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. Remove the peel from the bananas.

  3. Dip the bananas in lemon juice.

  4. Roll the bananas in fine sifted crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the bananas in a baking pan and bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with cream sweetened and flavored with cinnamon.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + sugartop 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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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
Provide the main soft, sweet body that softens and turns tender when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the banana surface from browning too quickly.
Fine sifted crumbs
Form a coating that helps the outside brown and gives the bananas a crisp exterior.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, smooth contrast to the warm baked bananas.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds mild sweetness to the finished dish.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the sweetened cream.

The step that matters

Dip the bananas in lemon juice. Bananas darken quickly once cut or peeled because enzymes react with oxygen. Acidic lemon juice slows this browning, so the coating should go on promptly after peeling.

Swap the banana

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

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

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