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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Banana fritters are fried banana halves coated in egg and cracker dust, sweetened with powdered sugar and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bananas in half crosswise and place them in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle the powdered sugar over the bananas.

  3. Pour the orange juice over the bananas.

  4. Let the bananas sit in a cool place for 1 hour, turning occasionally.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the bananas alternately in the beaten egg and cracker dust.

  2. Fry the coated bananas in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Serve with sauce of your choice.

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 + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Bananas
Provide the main body and sweet flavour of the fritters.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the bananas and draws out moisture to soften them with the juice.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fruity aroma that brightens the banana flavour.
Beaten egg
Binds the cracker dust to the bananas so the coating adheres during frying.
Cracker dust
Forms a crisp coating that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Fry the coated bananas in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying until golden brown means the crust has set and browned, which gives both crunch and flavour.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, egg. 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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