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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Bananas coated in batter and fried, served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Remove the skins from the bananas and cut them in half lengthwise, then across.

  2. Place the bananas in a shallow dish, pour the wine over them, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Cover and let stand for 30 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Gradually add the milk, then the melted butter, followed by the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Drain the bananas, dip them in the batter, and fry in hot oil until golden.

  2. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with sugar, and serve as an entree or with a wine sauce for dessert.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Banana + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that coats and crisps around the bananas.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritter coating puffs and becomes light.
Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks add lightness, while yolks enrich the batter.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a pourable batter that sets and browns when fried.
Bananas
Soft, sweet fruit that becomes tender and fragrant inside the crisp coating.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a tender texture in the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the batter. Overmixing or deflating them during folding makes the fritters dense and greasy once fried.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, egg, butter, white wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, butter, white wine, sugar. 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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