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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas coated in cracker crumbs and served with a sweet sauce made from boiling water, butter, sugar, cornstarch, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 549 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas and cut each in half crosswise.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, dip in the beaten egg, then roll in cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry in drippings or coconut oil until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine boiling water, butter, sugar, and cornstarch in a saucepan.

  2. Stir until thickened, then add the fruit and mix well.

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 + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main sweet, soft filling that cooks through inside the coating.
Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs so they stick to the banana pieces while frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water, butter and sugar mixture into a sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds body as it dissolves into the liquid.

The step that matters

Frying the coated bananas until golden brown. The egg and crumb coating browns and crisps in hot fat while the banana inside softens. Too low a heat soaks the coating with oil and leaves it greasy, while too high a heat browns the outside before the fruit is heated through.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, egg, coconut, 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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