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Dessert

Banana Sauce

A sweet banana sauce made with bananas, sugar, water, butter, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Banana Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Rub the bananas through a fine sieve.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and boiling water, then add the banana pulp.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim if necessary.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter with the flour, then stir in a little of the liquid from the saucepan.

  2. Add this mixture back into the saucepan along with the lemon juice and rind.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Bananas
Their pulp provides the main body, flavour and sweetness of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it is mixed with butter and cooked liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the sauce.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon and bananas.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the banana flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. Flour must be fully rubbed into the butter and blended with some hot liquid before returning to the pan; otherwise it can clump and leave the sauce lumpy instead of smoothly thickened.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, 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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