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Baking

Baked Bananas

A simple baked banana dish coated in egg, zwieback crumbs, and sugar.

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 sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,102 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Baked Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Select bananas that are not too ripe.

  2. Peel the bananas.

  3. Beat the egg in a bowl.

Coat

  1. Roll the bananas in the beaten egg.

  2. Roll the egg-coated bananas in finely ground zwieback.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the bananas on oiled baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nicely browned.

  3. Remove from the oven and roll in pulverized sugar.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the soft, sweet fruit that is wrapped in the coating and softened by baking.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the zwieback crumbs stick evenly to the bananas.
Finely ground zwieback
Forms a crisp, golden crumb coating that browns in the oven.
Oil
Keeps the coated bananas from sticking to the baking sheets and helps the crust brown.
Pulverized sugar
Adds a sweet finish to the outside of the baked bananas.

The step that matters

Coating the bananas evenly. The beaten egg is the glue for the crumbs. Bare spots let the fruit release moisture and scorch, while a thin, even layer of egg and crumbs bakes into a crisp, uniform crust.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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