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Dessert

Baked Bananas and Orange Dressing

A dessert of baked bananas topped with a sweet orange and lemon dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Bananas and Orange Dressing

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas carefully to avoid discoloration.

  2. Dredge the bananas with flour and sugar.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the orange dressing

  1. For the orange dressing, heat the juice of the oranges and lemon.

  2. Add sugar and cornflour mixed with a little cold water, stirring well.

  3. Cook for five minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the bananas and return to the oven for a few minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Soften and turn sweet and tender as they bake, forming the body of the dish.
Oranges
Their juice gives the dressing its main flavour and liquid base.
Sugar
Sweetens the bananas and the dressing, and helps the surface brown while baking.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet orange dressing.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the dressing as it heats and cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour into the hot juice. Cornflour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Mixing it smoothly in cold water first, then stirring while it cooks, lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the dressing without lumps.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, lemon. 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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