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Dessert

Scalloped Bananas

A baked banana dish with bread crumbs, butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Scalloped Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel and slice the bananas.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a buttered baking dish, arrange the banana slices alternately with the bread crumbs.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with salt, pepper, and butter, and add a little cream.

  3. Ensure the top layer is crumbs, well-buttered and moistened with cream.

  4. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then uncover to 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.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Banana + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together483 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish as they soften during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add structure between the banana layers, helping the dish hold together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.
Cream
Moistens the crumbs so they soften and do not dry out during baking.

The step that matters

Covering the dish while baking. Baking covered first traps steam so the bananas cook through and turn tender. Uncovering only at the end lets the buttered crumb top brown without drying the dish out too early.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, cream. 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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