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Dessert

Baked Bananas

A baked banana dish with sugar syrup and buttered cracker crumbs, served as a vegetable.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked Bananas

Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Mix together the sugar and boiling water.

  2. Stir in the corn starch, salt, and lemon juice.

Assemble

  1. Butter a baking dish and remove the skins from the bananas.

  2. Cut the bananas in half lengthwise, then cut each half into two pieces.

  3. Place a layer of banana pieces in the baking dish and pour a little sauce over them.

  4. Alternate layers of bananas and sauce, then cover with buttered cracker crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 to 30 minutes until the crumbs are brown.

  2. Serve with roast mutton or lamb as a vegetable.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Corn + bananatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Form the soft body of the dish, becoming tender and sweet as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps the crumbs and bananas brown in the oven.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the bananas instead of running off.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and helps keep bananas from darkening.
Buttered cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that contrasts with the soft fruit.

The step that matters

Alternate layers of bananas and sauce, then cover with buttered cracker crumbs.. Starch in the sauce only thickens properly when it is heated, so the sauce must be spread through the layers to moisten the bananas and keep the top from drying out before the crumbs brown.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, lemon, butter. 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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