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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A batter of flour, eggs, milk, butter, and salt is folded with beaten egg whites, then banana strips are dipped and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, egg yolks, milk, butter, and salt until smooth.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold them into the batter.

Prepare and fry

  1. Peel the bananas and cut them into strips lengthwise.

  2. Dip the banana strips into the batter.

  3. Fry the dipped strips in hot oil until light brown.

  4. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the fritters and serve warm or cold.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + bananatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that coats the banana strips.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the batter bind and turn smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they make the batter light and airy.
Milk
Thins the batter to a coating consistency and adds moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a tender texture.
Bananas
Provide the sweet, soft filling inside the crisp batter coating.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that makes the batter light; stirring them in vigorously knocks the air out, leaving the fritters dense and heavy instead of airy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, milk, butter, banana, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, butter, banana, 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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