Skip to main content
Dessert

Banana Fritters

A chilled banana dessert made with sliced bananas, egg yolks, vanilla essence, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Cool the preparation slightly.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cook by the side of the fire until thickened.

  3. Add the vanilla essence and sliced bananas.

Set and chill

  1. Pour into a prepared mold and let it set.

  2. Chill until firm.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

  3. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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 main flavour, natural sweetness and soft texture of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture when heated and help it set firm.
Vanilla essence
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolks until thickened. Egg yolk proteins thicken the mixture as they warm. Heat applied gently and stirred constantly gives a smooth texture. If the heat is too high or the mixture is left too long, the yolks scramble and turn grainy.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vanilla):

  1. Blueberryfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Bananathe original
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vanilla. 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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesBanana FillingBanana Filling16 recipesBanana SherbetBanana Sherbet10 recipesBanana FloatBanana Float9 recipes