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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A batter of flour, eggs, and lard fried with banana strips and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, egg yolks, salt, melted lard or butter, and enough water to create a batter similar to griddle cakes.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

  3. Stir in the banana strips.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan until smoking hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil and fry until golden brown, like doughnuts.

  3. Remove and dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 structure of the batter once it sets in hot oil.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the fritters brown.
Bananas
Add sweetness, moisture and flavour to the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot oil. Oil that is hot enough sets the batter quickly and browns the outside. If the oil is too cool, the fritters soak up grease and turn heavy. If it is too hot, the outside burns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, 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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