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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas are sliced bananas baked with brown sugar, butter, lemon juice, and caramel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Slice the bananas and place them on a platter.

  2. Sprinkle with brown sugar and dot with butter.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

  2. Remove from the oven and squeeze lemon juice over the bananas.

  3. Pour caramel sauce on top, then return to the oven.

  4. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 and turning golden as they bake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramelizes on the surface, creating browning and a rich flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat across the fruit and helps the sugar brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich caramel flavours.
Caramel sauce
Adds extra sweetness, moisture and deep caramel flavour over the baked bananas.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Browning comes from caramelization of the sugar and Maillard reactions, which need sustained heat. Pulling the dish early leaves the bananas pale and the sugar syrupy, while overbaking can scorch the sugar.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, sauce. 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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