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Dessert

Baked Bananas

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

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Bake in the skins

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake whole bananas in their skins for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the ends and serve in the skins like a potato.

Bake halved bananas

  1. For the second method, peel and slice bananas in half lengthwise.

  2. Place them in a buttered dish and squeeze lemon juice over them.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

Bake with bread crumbs

  1. For the third method, slice bananas and sprinkle with lemon juice and sugar.

  2. Layer in a buttered baking dish with bread crumbs, bananas, and more crumbs on top.

  3. Dot with butter and bake until brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plantain or cooking bananas
Starchy, mildly sweet flesh that softens and turns tender when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and slows browning of the cut fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and caramelises on the surface for colour and flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the bananas and form a crisp, golden topping.

The step that matters

Dot with butter and bake until brown.. No baking time is given for this method, so colour is the only guide. Sugar and butter brown quickly, so checking early prevents scorching while the bananas stay soft inside.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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