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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas are sliced ripe bananas fried in butter and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,536 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the ripe bananas and split them in half lengthwise.

  2. Fry the banana halves in butter until golden.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and serve as dessert.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Ripe bananas
Provide the main body and natural sweetness that softens and caramelises when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat evenly and promotes browning on the banana surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a caramelised crust when sprinkled on the hot bananas.

The step that matters

Frying the banana halves in butter until golden. Cooking over moderate heat lets the sugars in the banana caramelise and brown without burning the butter. Too high a heat scorches the outside before the centre softens.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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