Name: Bananas and Wine
Ingredients: 2 ripe bananas; ⅓ cup port or sherry; sugar to taste

Why it works: Banana and sherry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Bananas and Wine

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas
⅓ cup port or sherry
sugar to taste

Directions

Slice the bananas.
Sprinkle sugar over the sliced bananas.
Pour the port or sherry 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.

Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together117 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,141 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 of the dish.
Port or sherry: Adds aroma and a fruity, slightly acidic depth that balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and draws moisture from the bananas to form a syrup.