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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried batter of bananas, flour, and spices served with a lemon‑citrus sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add beaten egg, milk, lemon juice, and diced bananas to the dry ingredients. Stir until combined.

Fry and drain

  1. Drop spoonfuls of batter into hot oil and fry until crisp and brown.

  2. Remove fritters and drain on brown paper, then roll in powdered sugar.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, dissolve corn starch in cold water and stir into boiling water.

  2. Add grated lemon rind and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in lemon juice and sugar, let boil once, then strain and pour around fritters.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds the fritters together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in hot oil.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness, moisture, and flavor to the batter.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and glossy.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds flavor and browning to the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying the fritters in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, milk, lemon, corn, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk, lemon, corn, 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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