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Dessert

Banana Fritters

Fried banana pieces coated in batter, sweetened with sugar and soaked in rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and rum work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bananas in half and sprinkle with castor sugar.

  2. Soak the bananas in rum for a few minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each piece in the frying batter.

  2. Fry in boiling oil until golden brown.

  3. Serve on a napkin.

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 + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the soft, sweet filling that softens and becomes tender when fried.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the bananas and helps them caramelise slightly at the surface.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour to the bananas during the short soak.
Frying batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating that seals in moisture while frying.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough for the batter to set and crisp quickly. If the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs excess oil and turns greasy before it browns.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananathe original
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum. 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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