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Dessert

Fried Bananas with Sauce

Fried bananas served in a sweet sauce made with butter, flour, boiling water, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and rum work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fried Bananas with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In another pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until golden brown.

  2. Add boiling water and sugar to the flour mixture, stirring until it becomes syrupy.

  3. Mix in the rum.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep fat in a pan.

  2. Fry the bananas until golden brown, about 3 minutes.

  3. Let the fried bananas sit in the sauce for a few minutes before serving.

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. Banana + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  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
Provide the main body and sweetness, softening slightly while frying.
All-purpose flour
Cooked in butter until golden, it thickens the sauce as it mixes with the water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour brown and carry flavor into the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, as it dissolves, gives it a syrupy consistency.
Rum
Adds aroma and a warm flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into syrup. Adding boiling water and sugar to the browned flour must be stirred steadily so the starch disperses evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Bananathe original
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, rum. 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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