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Dessert

Spiced Bananas

A sweet dish of bananas simmered in a spiced syrup of allspice, cinnamon, water, sugar, orange and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine allspice, cinnamon, water, and sugar. Boil until thick.

  2. Stir in orange juice and lemon juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Add bananas and cook until thoroughly heated.

  2. Serve with the sauce poured over the bananas.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Allspice + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and thickens it as it boils down.
Bananas
Provide the fruit base that softens and warms in the sauce.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fruity sweetness to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet sauce.

Swap the banana

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

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

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