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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried batter of mashed bananas, flour, eggs, and lemon juice, served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Add water, olive oil, lemon juice, and mashed bananas.

  3. Sift in the flour to make a drop batter.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  5. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan for frying.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry until golden.

  3. Serve with sugar sprinkled over or with 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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Olive + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides the structure that holds the batter together while it fries.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lightness and airiness.
Ripe bananas
Add moisture, natural sweetness and flavor to the batter.
Olive oil
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the fritters lightness. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the fritters turn out dense and flat. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, flour, egg, lemon, 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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