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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried batter of bananas, eggs, milk, sugar, baking powder, and flour, served hot with sauce.

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the milk, sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough flour to create a very stiff batter.

  3. Fold in the sliced bananas.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat hot lard in a deep pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until deep brown.

  3. Serve hot with a sauce.

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. Banana + flourtop 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps the fritters hold their shape.
Flour
Provides structure, so the stiff batter holds together in the hot fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the fritters puff and turn light.
Bananas
Add sweetness, moisture and flavour to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Frying until deep brown. The lard must be hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and gives browning, while cooler fat soaks into the batter and makes the fritters greasy and heavy.

Swap the banana

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

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

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