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Breakfast

Banana Pancakes

A batter of mashed bananas, flour, eggs, and milk is fried into pancakes and served with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mash the bananas to a pulp.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add enough milk to create a stiff batter.

  4. Whip the egg whites until frothy and fold into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. In a skillet, heat lard or butter and pour in the batter to form pancakes.

  2. Fry until golden brown, then flip carefully.

  3. Drain on a sieve and serve on a napkin or dish paper.

  4. Sprinkle with caster sugar and serve with sliced lemon.

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. 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

Bananas
Add moisture and natural sweetness, and help the batter hold together.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the pancakes cook.
Eggs
Add structure and richness; whipped whites lighten the batter for a softer texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a stiff batter with the right consistency.
Lard or butter
Fat for frying that promotes even browning and a crisp golden surface.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that gives lift; overmixing after folding deflates them, leaving dense pancakes instead of light ones.

Swap the banana

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

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

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