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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas are sliced bananas coated in egg and flour, baked in a buttered paper bag, and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas and slice them lengthwise or cut each into two.

  2. Mix the egg yolk with the milk and brush it onto the bananas.

  3. Dredge the bananas in flour and dip each slice in melted butter.

Bake in a bag

  1. Butter the inside of a large paper bag.

  2. Place the bananas inside the bag.

  3. Fold the end of the bag and fasten the bag with wire clips.

  4. Place the bag on a wire rack in a 400°F (200°C) oven and cook for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the bag and gently dish up the bananas.

  2. Sprinkle with castor sugar.

  3. Serve hot, plain or with whipped cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Bananas
Provide the main body and sweetness, softening into a tender filling as they cook.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the coating cling and brown lightly in the oven.
Flour
Dries the banana surface and gives the coating structure so it holds together.
Melted butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the coating brown in the heat.

The step that matters

Fasten the bag tightly before baking. If the bag is not sealed, steam escapes and the bananas dry out instead of cooking gently in their own moisture and the coating may not set well.

Swap the banana

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

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

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