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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A batter of flour, eggs, sugar, and bananas fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, salt, sugar, and enough milk to create a batter.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter along with the melted butter.

  4. Slice the bananas and gently stir them into the batter.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a pan until boiling and fry spoonfuls of the batter until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fritters on coarse brown paper.

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. Milk + bananatop 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. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the batter together while it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters rise and turn light.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add air and lightness to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter.
Bananas
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Frying the fritters in hot fat. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. Frying at a steady, hot temperature sets the outside quickly so the inside cooks through and the batter stays light.

Swap the banana

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

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

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