Skip to main content
Dessert

Bananas, Fried

Fried banana pieces coated in flour, served with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bananas, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the bananas into pieces.

  2. Coat each piece in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil or butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the banana pieces until golden brown.

  3. Serve with poached eggs, similar to how bacon and eggs are served.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Banana + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sweet, soft base that becomes tender when fried.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that helps the pieces brown and crisp in the pan.
Oil or butter
Conducts heat into the banana pieces and drives browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Bananas are soft and sugary, so they can scorch before the coating crisps if the heat is too high. Medium heat lets the flour brown gradually while the banana softens through.

Swap the banana

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

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

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

You might also like

Banana FillingBanana Filling16 recipesBanana SherbetBanana Sherbet10 recipesBanana FloatBanana Float9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes