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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Banana fritters are fried banana slices coated in flour and batter, served with rum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and rum work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the bananas crosswise.

  2. Roll the banana slices in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the floured bananas in the batter.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Serve with rum 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. Banana + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Banana + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + rumtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together810 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Banana + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the sweet, soft interior that cooks through during frying.
All-purpose flour
Dry coating that helps the batter grip the fruit and promotes browning.
Batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating around the banana when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is too cool lets the coating absorb grease and turn soggy, while oil that is too hot browns the batter before the banana heats through. Steady, hot oil gives a crisp coating and a tender centre.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, rum, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Pineapplefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rum, sauce. 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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