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Dessert

Baked Banana Dumplings

A baked dumpling filled with minced banana, sugar, butter, and lemon extract, served with a cinnamon-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Banana Dumplings

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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Add about ½ cup of water and mix lightly with a spoon.

  4. Divide the mixture into 4 balls and roll each out to the size of large saucers.

Fill and bake

  1. Place minced banana, sugar, butter, and lemon extract in the center of each round.

  2. Bring the edges of the dough together, wetting them to seal, and leave an opening for steam to escape.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together 4 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons butter, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Add ½ cup boiling water to the sauce and mix well.

  3. Serve the dumplings hot with the sauce.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the banana filling during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and turn light in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and moisture to the filling.
Minced banana
Provides moisture and natural sweetness inside the dumplings.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the sauce, dissolves to form a syrupy liquid.

The step that matters

Sealing the dough edges. Wet edges must be pressed firmly together so the filling stays inside while baking. The opening left for steam lets pressure escape so the dough does not burst.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, lemon, sauce, cinnamon. 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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