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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas coated in cracker crumbs and served with a sweet sauce of butter, sugar, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 549 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas and cut each in half crosswise.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, dip in the beaten egg, and roll in cracker crumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Heat drippings or coconut oil in a pan and fry the bananas until golden brown.

  2. In a separate pot, combine boiling water, butter, sugar, and cornstarch.

  3. Stir until thickened.

  4. Add the chopped fruit to the sauce and serve it with the fried bananas.

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. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Coconut + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 filling that becomes tender and creamy when fried.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick to the bananas.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water and sugar mixture into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken into a glossy syrup.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. The bananas are coated in crumbs and cooked in hot fat. If the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy; if too hot, it browns before the banana softens through.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, egg, coconut, butter, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, egg, coconut, butter, 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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