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Dessert

Baked Apple and Bananas

Baked apples stuffed with bananas, sweetened with sugar and brightened with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Baked Apple and Bananas

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the apples by coring them, making the hole large enough to hold half a banana.

  3. Stuff each apple with half a banana.

  4. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of sugar over each apple.

  5. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice on top.

Bake

  1. Bake the apples in the preheated oven until tender.

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. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Provide the firm fruit that softens into tender, spoonable flesh as the cell walls break down with heat.
Bananas
Add sweetness and a soft, creamy texture that fills the cored centre as it warms.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cut surfaces brown and caramelize slightly in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps slow browning on the cut fruit.

The step that matters

Bake until tender. Heat softens apple by breaking down its pectin and cell walls. Too short a bake leaves the apple firm and starchy, while too long turns it mushy and collapses the shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, banana, sugar):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, banana, 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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