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Dessert

Bananas, Baked

A simple oven-baked banana dish with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bananas, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Peel the bananas and place them in a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with brown sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bananas.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped nuts if desired.

  4. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the bananas are soft and caramelized.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Banana + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Cinnamon + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Their starch and sugars soften and caramelize in the oven, providing the main body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the sugar coat the bananas and brown.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the dish and caramelizes in the oven, forming a glossy, flavorful syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the sweetness of the bananas and sugar.

The step that matters

Bake for 15-20 minutes until the bananas are soft and caramelized. Underbaked bananas stay firm and the sugar does not fully caramelize, while overbaking can dry the syrup and make the fruit collapse. Watching for softness and a bubbling, browned syrup shows when they are done.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, butter, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, butter, sugar, cinnamon. 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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