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Dessert

Banana Compote

A dessert of bananas simmered in lemon‑flavored syrup, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Banana Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and halve the bananas lengthwise.

  2. Place the bananas in a pan and cover with lemon-flavored syrup.

  3. Bring the syrup to a boil.

Make the compote

  1. Remove the bananas and place them in a glass dish.

  2. Boil the syrup until it thickens, adjusting the flavor to taste.

  3. Pour the syrup over the bananas and serve with boiled rice.

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. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Banana + ricetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Banana + syruptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe bananas
Provide the main fruit, sweetness and soft texture once cooked in the syrup.
Lemon-flavored syrup
Adds sweetness and bright citrus aroma, and thickens as it reduces.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it thickens. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and flavor and makes it thicker. Stop too early and it stays thin and watery; reduce too long and it becomes overly sticky or caramelised. Tasting as it reduces helps you hit the right balance.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, syrup, rice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, syrup, rice. 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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