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Dessert

Baked Bananas

A simple baked banana dish with sugar, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Bananas

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 ↓

Baked Bananas

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Remove the skins from the bananas and scrape off the rough strings.

  3. Cut the bananas in half lengthwise, then cut them once across.

  4. Layer the banana pieces in a shallow baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Mix the hot water, sugar, lemon juice, and melted butter together.

  2. Spread the mixture between the layers of bananas and on top.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes or longer until the bananas are rich in color.

  4. Serve hot as a vegetable or 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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 body and soft texture, and soften and caramelize as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the bananas brown and deepen in color in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps slow browning of the fruit.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor across the bananas as they bake.

The step that matters

Bake until rich in color. Baking time depends on how deeply the bananas have softened and browned. Stopping too early leaves them pale and under-cooked, while the sugar can scorch if left too long at high heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, butter. 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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