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Disguised Bananas

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and tamarind share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Disguised Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

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

  2. Peel and cut the baking bananas into 5 or 6 pieces.

  3. In a covered pan, combine the bananas with sugar, bits of butter, cinnamon, and either fruit juice or tamarinds and water.

  4. Bake slowly for 3 to 4 hours, or quickly in an uncovered pan.

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. Cinnamon + tamarindtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Banana + tamarindtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Banana + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + tamarindtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, tamarind. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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