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Dessert

Bananas, Boiled

Boiled green bananas served with a sauce made from butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bananas, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bananas

  1. Peel and halve the bananas.

  2. Place them in a pan with milk, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Simmer gently for 25 to 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make a roux by melting butter and stirring in flour.

  2. Pour the liquid from the bananas into the roux and stir until it boils.

  3. Serve the bananas on a hot dish with the sauce over them.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Green bananas
Starchy flesh that holds its shape and softens gently during simmering.
Milk
Provides the liquid for simmering and, reduced, forms the body of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that is melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the melted butter and cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the liquid into the roux. Adding liquid to a roux all at once or without stirring can leave lumps of flour. Stirring steadily while it comes to a boil lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, milk, butter, 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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