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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A batter of flour, egg, milk, and baking powder is poured over sliced bananas and fried, then dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Add the milk to the egg and mix well.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and beat until smooth.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut the bananas lengthwise and then across into pieces.

  2. Dip the banana pieces in the batter.

  3. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + bananatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the structure of the batter that coats and holds the banana pieces.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets in the hot fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter a smooth, pourable texture.
Bananas
Provide sweetness, moisture, and a soft interior inside the crisp batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Too hot, and the outside browns before the banana heats through.

Swap the banana

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

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

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